225th Anniversary Cake

The Mission:
Bake the cake that my husband saw in the Baker's Chocolate recipe book that I have. He'd been begging for it for quite some time, but since it was fairly involved, I decided to wait and bake it for his birthday. I made the cake and the icing the night before, but didn't have time to ice the cake until immediately prior to serving it.

The Ingredients:

• 2 tsps butter, melted and divided
• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 package (8 squares) Baker's Semi-sweet baking chocolate
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, cut into 1/2" pieces
• 1 1/4 cup sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1 tsp vanilla

The Instructions:
Lightly grease 2 (9" round) cake pans with half of the melted butter. Cover the bottom of each pan with wax paper (or parchment paper); brush evenly with the remaining melted butter. Set aside. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside. Melt the chocolate and the cut-up butter in a double boiler until smooth and creamy. Set aside. Beat the sugar and eggs in a medium bowl with an electric mixer on high speed for 2 minutes or until slightly thickened and pale in color. Add the chocolate mixture; beat until well blended. Gradually add flour mixture, beating on low speed until well blended. Add buttermilk and vanilla; beat on low for 15 seconds, then on high for 15 seconds. If the batter isn't completely blended, mix with a rubber spatula until it is. Pour the cake batter evenly into the prepared pans, and spread to evenly cover bottom of each pan. Bake for 30-34 minutes in a preheated 325*F oven. Cool in pans for 5 minutes then remove to wire rack to cool completely after removing wax paper. Fill and frost with 225th Anniversary Fudge Icing. Refrigerate until 30 minutes prior to serving.

225th Anniversary Fudge Icing

The Ingredients:

• 2 cups firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 1 1/4 cups heavy whipping cream
• 1 cup half-and-half
• 1 package (8 squares) baker's semi-sweet baking chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 6 Tbsp butter, cut into 1/2" pieces

The Instructions:

Place all ingredients except butter in a medium sauce pan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring frequently with a wire whisk to dissolve the sugar and melt the chocolate. Reduce heat to medium-low, simmer 25 minutes or until thickened, stirring frequently. Remove from heat. Add the butter, once piece at a time, stirring after each addition until it is completely melted before adding the next piece. Pour the fudge mixture into a 15 x 10 x 1 inch pan and spread evenly. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour. (If refrigerating for more than 1 hour, let stand at room temperature for 20 minutes before beating as directed in next step.) Place chilled fudge mixture in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer on high speed for 1 minute., scrape the bottom and side of the bowl. Continue beating 30 seconds or until light and fluffy. Immediately frost the cake.

The Result:
Well - for whatever reason, my cake looked NOTHING like the picture. It seemed very flat somehow.... and I'm still not quite sure what I did wrong there. I will try again sometime. The Icing never got "light and fluffy" instead it was runny and gooey. I ended up pouring it over the cake and hoping for the best. Thankfully it tasted absolutely fantastic! I had people fighting over the last piece. I didn't even have time to take a picture :(

The Reviews:

I heard a lot of reviews. "oh my god" "wow" "mmmmm" and "can I have another piece" were among the most coherent. I will definitely be making this again sometime. Most likely sometime soon. I have to please the herd of people that didn't seem to get enough of it on Saturday night.