The Three Hour Chocolate Cake

I had a birthday this past weekend (which was awesome, thanks for asking!) and one of the ways I wanted to celebrate was to make the cake I remember from childhood, or at least teenage, birthdays.  So I called my mom up to ask for the recipes for this lovely, rich, made all the way from scratch recipe.  This is roughly the conversation that ensued

Me: Hi Mom!  Can you send me the recipe for the chocolate you used to make for my birthday?
Mom:  What recipe are you talking about, honey?  I don't know what cake you're thinking of.  Do you mean the cake I make for the Christmas party?
Me: (now doubting reliability of childhood memories) No, you know, the cake you used to make for my birthday.  From scratch.  With 4 layers.  And all the chocolate frosting.  I think I made it for a Girl Scout thing once.
Mom:  I make a 4-layer cake at Christmas, is that what you mean?  But I haven't made that from scratch in like 20 years (ad lib, my mom doesn't use "like" quite as liberally as I do).  I use a box mix for the cake now and then make the icing from scratch.  It has a whipped cream frosting in between the layers.
Me: No, this cake was all chocolate (...I'm pretty sure).  Well, Ok, send me a recipe for the Christmas cake, then, since apparently I've falsely built birthday memories around a fictional cake.

So my mom sent me the recipe for the Christmas Cake (I should mention that this is a Christmas party cake not a Dec 25th cake, so I'm never around in the middle of December to actually partake of this cake).  She sent me recipes for both types of icing and a Chocolate Fudge Cake recipe from a cookbook from 1983 which may be the last time I experienced this cake.

Anyway, I wasn't going to do this whole box-cake thing (although, let's be real, I do it with plenty of other stuff, and the cake I spent hours making, didn't really taste a whole heck of a lot different).

The first thing you do with this cake is put a ton of ingredients together, substituting where you didn't read the recipe correctly before heading to Kroger (see: unsifted all purpose flour instead of sifted cake flour).  Use every dish in your kitchen. You're done with the cake batter once they're all dirty. Wash. Repeat for frosting. See exhibit A and B

Exhibit A - those canisters in the back had to be wiped down after this.

Exhibit B - OK, I have no idea why the skillet is there.  Uh, breakfast, maybe?  But pay close attention and notice the coating of flour or powdered sugar or something that I managed to get all over the sink.  Fun times. 

Next, use your crazy awesome powers of estimation to equally distribute the cake batter between two pans.  Cook.  Open the oven, pull one pan out to check whether it's done.  It's not. Put it back in.  Realize that you took the slightly fuller pan out (darn you, magical estimation ability) so it had more batter and got a minute less cooking time (because that's how long it took you to realize you had no toothpicks and to use a spaghetti noodle instead to check the cake).  One cake is now "fudgier" than the other.  Have fun with that when you flip onto the wire rack to cool.  It'll be a blast.  

Next wait for cakes to cool and then cut each one in half to get your 4 layers.  A very helpful tip from my mom was to put toothpicks in around the edge of the cake where you want to cut so that you have a guide for the knife and you cut evenly.  Or if you happen to be out of toothpicks (hypothetically speaking) then organic whole wheat spaghetti noodles may also work.  Just sayin.

Note: The noodles (pictured so nicely in the back) did not live there before this day, but they made so many appearances I decided to make them more convenient and fill the empty canister.  Also, note the hand for balance on the counter while I take this photo.  I'm not above totally blaming my physical therapist (who has banned me from all exercise besides walking, swimming and her special stretch things) for my utter lack of balance at this given time.  

Next step, make the fancy whipped cream icing.  Sample.  Now, layer the cake with a splash of that icing in between each layer.  

Oh look!! New dishes to wash! And a big ole mess on that wire rack from the "fudgier" one.

All stacked up your cake will look this.  Here's a little hint for you.  You may want to think about the fact that the top half of each of those cakes from the cake pan may be a little bigger than the bottom half.  So maybe when you're stacking four on top of each other it would be better to start with those bigger ones on bottom. Maybe.  OR...if you don't think about that beforehand and stack them like I did (see pic) then maybe you'll have to "shave" your cake a bit (thanks, Buddy and the crew from Cake Boss).  And maybe that means that you end up with a little bowl of cake scraps that just might taste awfully yummy with some leftover frosting and a glass of milk.  Ya know, hypothetically speaking. 

Next up, frost the cake with the chocolate frosting.  The recipe my mom sent for icing was mocha icing.  I know this isn't the cake from my misremembered youth since I detest anything coffee-ish.  I deleted the 1/4 of strong coffee and substituted milk.  I noticed that it was a little weak in flavor so added some more cocoa powder to substitute for the missing flavor from subtracting the coffee.  Then, I decorated with fresh strawberries (only because at 3 hours into this process I wasn't about to pipe anything onto this sucker).  

However, I wouldn't recommend the strawberries in future.  There's so much sugar in the icing that in the 2-3 hours we were at dinner, the strawberries macerated (new word!!! it means get all runny and drippy and stuff from the sugar) and then strawberry juice ran all down the sides which interfered with the purity of the "put you in a coma it's so sweet and rich" flavor I was going for. 

Yum!

And here's the recipe in case you've got 3 hours to kill.  It's worth it!  Complete with little tidbits from my mom, too. :)  Although, you could probably get away with a box cake.  It's all about the frosting, right?  I'm pretty sure that's the motto on my family crest.  Both the frosting recipes are included, too.  

Best Fudge Cake

3 (1 oz) squares unsweetened chocolate

1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened

2 1/4 cups firmly packed brown sugar

3 eggs

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour

2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 (8 oz) carton sour cream

1 cup boiling water

Melt chocolate; set aside to cool.  Cream butter in a large mixing bowl; gradually add sugar, beating well.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Add chocolate and vanilla, mix well. 

Combine flour, soda, salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with sour cream, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Stir in boiling water. (Batter will be thin.)

Pour batter into 2 greased and floured 9 inch round cake pans.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30 - 35 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.  Cool in pans 10 minutes; remove from pans and cool completely on wire racks.  Split cakes in half horizontally to make 4 layers (hint: I use toothpicks to mark the mid point of the sides to help guide the cutting in half).  Spread filling between layers,; frost sides and top of cake.

Filling:

1 1/2 cups whipping cream

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar

Beat whipping cream and vanilla until foamy; gradually add powdered sugar, beating until soft peaks form.

Mocha Frosting: (it's really good even if you don't like coffee) (That's mom's note, she sets the timer on the coffee make so that she doesn't have to be awake for longer than a few minutes without coffee so I'm not sure how reliable her opinion is on this subject)

1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened

5 cups sifted powdered sugar

1/4 cup cocoa

1/4 cup strong coffee

2 tsp. vanilla 

about 2 Tb. whipping cream