One Bowl Chocolate Cake with Swirled Icing

About a month ago, one of our oldest friends, Bill, called me up. As he usually is, Bill was direct. “How do I go about getting you to make a cake for Amelia’s [his youngest daughter's] birthday?” Me–”well usually we start with what she wants, and we go from there.” Bill–”okay, I’ll work on finding out what that is.”

If it seems like that was easy for Bill–well it was. But for a reason. Bill is a very special friend. He and Noel have known each other since well, forever ago (forever ago being when Noel sported a mullet). They started a theatre company together. Bill was the person who first really introduced me to Baltimore, back when I was still a scared college girl from waaaay out in the sticks. He introduced me to Noel. Got me my first job out of college. He and his oldest daughter were in our wedding. So yeah, we’ve got history. And history deserves cake.

And what a cake it was. Amelia’s final 5th birthday cake order was something only a 5 year old could dream up–chocolate cake (could it be blue cake? no, not unless it was red velvet, which the adults vetoed), with pink icing with blue swirled in. And strawberries on top. Because with a cake for a May birthday, why not add the pick of the season?

At first I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to do a swirled icing, but thanks to my failure to read the entire request email until after I had made a whole bowl of blue icing, only to then read the whole thing and discover the icing was supposed to be pink, and some ingenious late night thinking, I ended up with a new technique. Since I had a whole bowl of pink and and a bowl of blue, I would mix them. Put two scoops of pink in a bowl, followed by one scoop of blue. Scoop onto the icing spatula, being sure to get some of each color. As I spread the colors swirled–it was like magic before my eyes. As I added a little more pink here, a little more blue there, making the perfect colors! I felt like I was five again, coloring with my cray-pas oil pastels.

And once I got started I couldn’t stop. Why not pipe a fun border and some decorations? It’s a little girl’s birthday after all, and little girls need fancy!

In the end, all of the work was worth it. When we delivered the cake Amelia immediately declared it the “miracle, best birthday cake ever!” and wanted to dig into it right away. We convinced her to wait until the party–where all of the kids and the adults enjoyed the cake. And we had a winner!

One Bowl Chocolate Cake
Adapted from Martha Stewart

This may just be the perfect chocolate cake recipe. It’s moist, delicious, and totally chocolatey without being too rich. It almost reminded me of a brownie as I was taking it out of the pan, which certainly contributed to it’s crowd pleasing quality. And amazingly it didn’t crumb all over the place, not even in the crumb layer. Tastes good and a decorators dream? Thank you Martha! I forgive you for making me sift ALL of the dry ingredients!

Ingredients:

Makes 2 eight-inch square or 3 eight-inch round layers

Unsalted butter or cooking spray, for pans
1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 1/2 cups buttermilk (I used 1 1/2 cups of skim milk with one tablespoon of white vinegar mixed in)
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter pans, and line bottoms with parchment; butter parchment. Or simply spray the pans with a cooking spray for baking.

Into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, sift cocoa, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. With the mixer on low, stir in eggs, 1 1/2 cups warm water, buttermilk, vegetable oil, and vanilla until smooth, about 3 minutes. The batter will be very thin, but bubbly at this point.

Divide batter among prepared pans. Bake, rotating once, until tester inserted in center comes out clean, 35 to 45 minutes for 8-inch layers, depending on amount of batter. If you’re only using one pan (I used one 10 inch round pan to make two 10 inch layers, make sure you measure out the batter and put equal amounts in the pans. This will help your layers to be even!)

Let cakes cool in pans on a wire rack for 20 minutes, then remove from pans and cool completely, right side up on rack. Ice with delicious buttercream. My current favorite recipe is three sticks of butter (3/4 pound), to one pound of powdered sugar. Add in the powdered sugar 1/4 cup at a time, mixing well after each addition. After all of the sugar is incorporated, add 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla, then mix well. Add and coloring and ice away!

Then get ready for a little birthday magic!

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