Chocolate Buttercream Cake

I ate so much frosting yesterday.

Gabe had his 3rd birthday party today, and I needed to come up with the cake I had promised him (he has finally clued into cakes being synonymous with birthday parties). I figured he didn't care as long as there was sugar involved, and I'm pretty pro natural foods so my mission was to make a fun cake from scratch. So I thought it the perfect opportunity to see what Ina had to offer in the way of desserts, and gabe opted for the chocolate instead of the coconut cupcakes (I was secretly pushing the coconut but he insisted on chocolate). The only requirement was that there be cars on top, so I knew I'd have to modify the presentation a little.. or entirely I guess.



I followed the cake recipe exactly, coffee and everything, except to cut it in half and bake it twice because I only had 1 9" round cake pan. And now that I think about it, the recipe called for 8", but no big deal. The cake batter was so smooth, it almost tasted like frosting itself. I buttered and floured the pan the first time and then only buttered it the second time, but it still came out easily (I thought I was in serious trouble - whew).




While waiting for the second half to bake, I made the frosting. My melting-chocolate-over-boiling-water method was pretty ghetto, but it worked. I halved the recipe for this too, since I wanted to decorate with vanilla frosting also, and made several changes. I used all semisweet (chocolate chips) and no bittersweet chocolate and omitted the espresso powder and optional rum. I did take some care to heat the egg whites, while stirring, to hotter than advised because I didn't want kids puking at our party. The birthday boy even got to lick the spatula clean - isn't that the only part you end up remembering anyway?



I got some all-natural decor at Whole Foods, made a vanilla buttercream frosting off allrecipes.com, and got to decorating. It kinda came out looking like a cross between a race track and a circus, but the cars on top were a hit, and the cake was too. The cake itself was very chocolatey and not too sweet, and for a frosting, the chocolate buttercream wasn't overly sweet either. I could see devouring an entire piece like the one shown on the back cover of the cookbook, even though it looks like an ungodly amount of frosting. I think I would have liked the bittersweet addition to the frosting like the recipe called for. But I really liked it and so did the party goers. It tasted gourmet and, without cars, would be a really fancy birthday cake for a chocolate lover.



Toward the end of decorating, it was past dinnertime and I was getting that hungry-for-something-that-isn't-pure-sugar feeling in my stomach. So once I put the cake in the fridge, I sat down and had the biggest plate of veggies and rice you've ever seen. And shortly after, I had some more cake.