Tuesdays with Dorie - Cocoa-buttermilk Birthday Cake

Let me first say thank you, Laurie, for all your hard work and effort over the last two years! You do an amazing job keeping up with all the bakers who are part of this great group. Happy Anniversary to us!! While I have only been with the group on an official basis since September, I have had the book and been hanging around for almost a year. To think you all have been baking together two years now is just amazing! Laurie let us vote for a recipe to bake for this week and it was decided we could choose between two...Cocoa-Buttermilk Birthday Cake or Tarte Tatin.

I chose the Cocoa-Buttermilk Birthday Cake. I am definitely more of a cake (chocolate cake!) person than a fruity dessert person, though I do love apple desserts. But, when having to choose between chocolate and apples, chocolate will always win.

I gathered all my ingredients together and got busy. The cake came together easily. I had it in the oven in no time. Baked it for 25 minutes to start with. The recipe calls for 26-30 minutes. After 25 minutes I checked it for doneness, according to Dorie's recipe..."cakes feel springy to the touch and start to pull away from the sides of the pan". My cakes were not doing any of that, so I baked them for another 3 minutes. Did a toothpick test for doneness and pulled them from the oven. I was a bit disappointed by the lack of rise in the cakes. Each layer was only an inch tall. Not at all like other cakes I have baked.

While the cake cooled, I worked on the frosting. I was looking forward to that. Chocolate Malt flavored buttercream. How yummy sounding! Again, I followed the instructions and things seemed to be going well until I added the hot malt-cocoa mixture to the melted chocolate. As I added the liquid and stirred gently with a whisk, the mixture seized up and attached itself to the whisk, refusing to let loose. What the heck!?! I kept moving the whisk around in the bowl and eventually the mixture loosened up and became smooth. Never did get glossy, but at least when I pulled the whisk out, the chocolate mixture stayed in the bowl.

Added the chocolate mixture to the butter/brown sugar in my mixer bowl and began to beat it. Recipe says it will be light and thick enough to use. Well, mine was light, but way too thin to spread on a cake. It was also very grainy looking. I added more powdered sugar and beat it longer, much longer, and while it became a bit thicker, it never lost the graininess. :( It was thick enough to frost the top and sides, but I decided to use some cream cheese filling I had for the center. I was afraid the chocolate-malt buttercream would just ooze out between the layers, it was that soft and thin.

So, I filled and iced the cake and stuck it in the fridge to firm up the icing. We tried it later that night for dessert. It was a big disappointment for both of us. The cake was dry, almost tasteless. The icing wasn't as good as we thought it would be with the addition of brown sugar and malted milk powder. It sat in the fridge for two nights, untouched. That doesn't happen in this house. My hubby is a "cake for dessert" nut. Ten minutes after dinner he is asking for dessert and I almost always have a cake on the counter. He asked for ice cream one night and for cookies another night, store bought cookies! Nuff said!

Next time I make this cake...scratch that...next time I will make the Tarte Tatin. Maybe some of the other bakers had better luck with this one than I did. Be sure to head over to TWD and see.