Chocolate Cake

This is the recipe from the back of Swan's Down cake flour.  Aside from making it scaled to 2/3 for a 6" cake, I left it intact.

I really wish 6" cakes were more popular.  They're dinner-party sized.  Way back when, someone decided that a 2-layer 8" cake should be the standard.  Now that height is a trend, a 3 or 4 layer 8" cake feeds an army and half of each slice goes uneaten.  Reducing it by one egg and 2" of diameter still gets you two slightly thicker layers.

My cakes domed and cracked, even with the baking strips.  More snacks when they were trimmed, but I was hoping for better height in my layers.  I sliced the thicker one into two anyway.  This would be a benefit if you're making cupcakes.  It's only annoying if you want a flat cake.  I'm guessing it's because there's baking soda instead of baking powder in the recipe, but I don't feel like fixing this recipe today.  I have at least three more cakes to recipe test by the middle of September.

I did make one accidental substitution.  I wasn't paying attention and bought sugar-free chocolate instead of unsweetened.  To make up for this, I measured the sugar in this cake level and not packed.  It's really good chocolate and melts well.  I usually taste the difference with artificial sweeteners, but I'd buy this again.

3 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted
1/2 C (1 stick) unsalted butter
2-1/4 C light brown sugar, packed
3 eggs
1-1/2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2-1/4 C cake flour, sifted before measuring
1 C sour cream
1 C boiling water

1.  Preheat oven to 350º.  Grease two 9" round pans (or 2 8" round by 3" deep pans) with shortening.  Line with wax paper and grease again.  Fit with damp cake baking strips if available.

2.  Cream butter until smooth.  Add brown sugar and eggs.  Beat until light and fluffy.  Beat in vanilla and chocolate, then baking soda and salt.

3.  Add flour alternately with sour cream, beating until smooth.  At this point, you have a thick batter. Pour in the boiling water and stir until you get a very thin batter.  Pour into prepared pans.

4.  Bake about 30 minutes, until it passes the toothpick test.  I ended up adding 12 more minutes, but my cakes were thicker than the original recipe intended.  Cool in pans for 10 minutes.  This is a delicate cake.  Turn out and remove the wax paper.  Cool completely before frosting (or freezing to ice on a less scalding hot day).

Makes one 2-layer cake, about 16-20 servings

Difficulty rating  :)