Saturday, December 30, 2017

The Marble Cake To Do

The second day oof the baking extravaganza commenced. As often as I write about baking to be honest I haven't made a two layer cake in over thirty-two years. To be honest I can see why.

The bake started out OK.
Of course I went to my go to cake mix brand - Duncan Hines. I can;'t say enough about how consistent their cakes are. This is my first foray into two pan baking. I used I Can"t Believe It's Not Butter to grease the 8 inch circular pans. These are the best to bake with.

Marble cakes requires two packages, One is a yellow cake mix, the smaller white one is the cocoa powder that is to be mixed with a cup of batter

Below is the chocolate batter swirled with a knife in the batter. You can use a knife, I used a Slushie spoon which gave the two layers a nice swirl effect.
See/// The upper picture is the baked layers, Even the raw batter looks cool.
Now comes the fun part., Home made chocolate buttercream icing.
Again to be honest I borrowed from a few recipes on line and cobbled them into my own.
The most important ingredient is butter and I used the best  - twelve tablespoons of Kerry Gold
Second most important is the cocoa.I used Hershey's baking powder .abotu a cup to create a rich , fudgy flavor.

To give it smoothness and flavor I used Stop & Shop's whole cream. about  half the carton and two tablespoons of Neisnen Massey vanilla. I could have added sea salt to balance out that sweet, but that may create too much of a contrast. The icing was a pain to blend, even when using an electric mixer.
My kitchen and self were coated in this.
The end result was pretty good - a very smooth  and creamy fudg elike frosting that held its' own. I used an icing knife which is a must have for any home baker.
It looks like a giant Dingdong doesn't it?
T
his is the perfect cake and frosting for a fun get together. It is labor intensive but worth it.