209. Golden Cake with Chocolate-Sour Cream Frosting (p. 725)

My son's first birthday was on December 30th (Wow, that was fast!), and we celebrated with a party on New Year's Day. I was determined to have a homemade cake for my son's very first birthday ... no store-bought cake would do. But, we had invited about sixty relatives and friends, so I was in a bit of a quandary about how I was going to handle cake for a crowd.

The Book came to my rescue. As I flipped through the cakes chapter, I noticed that the Cook's Note at the end of this recipe says that instead of a layer cake, you can use the same batter to make cupcakes. A-ha! That's it ... I decided to make one cake and enough cupcakes to go with it so that there would be plenty for everyone.

Because I knew that things would be pretty hectic leading up to the party, I decided to make the cake and cupcakes ahead of time so that I'd only need to make the frosting on party day. So, a week before the party, I sifted together some cake flour, a ton of baking powder, some baking soda, and salt. Then I creamed some softened butter and granulated sugar in my KitchenAid. I added some eggs and vanilla extract. (Speaking of vanilla extract, because I haven't posted in about six weeks, I haven't had the chance to mention that I got a 32-ounce bottle of Madagascar vanilla extract for Christmas...thirty-two ounces! That's a whole quart!) Then I added the half of the flour mixture followed by a container of sour cream ... yeah, I know, I wasn't expecting that either ... and then the rest of the flour mixture. I divided the batter into two nine-inch round cake pans that I had buttered, floured and lined with wax paper. I baked the cake layers for about forty minutes. I repeated the whole process to make the cupcakes. I scooped the batter into a muffin tin (using an ice-cream scoop ... thanks for the tip, Ina Garten!), cooking the cupcakes for about 25 minutes per batch. (One recipe makes about three dozen cupcakes.) Once the cake layers and cupcakes were cooled, I put them in the freezer. I wrapped the cake layers in plastic wrap and then foil, and I put the cupcakes in zip-top bags. The day before the party, I transferred the cakes and cupcakes from the freezer to the refrigerator to thaw slowly.

The morning of the party, I made the frosting. First, I melted some milk chocolate and semisweet chocolate together in a metal bowl over simmering water. I took the chocolate off the heat and whisked in some more sour cream. Again, I would have never expected that.

While the frosting cooled to room temperature, I unwrapped the cake layers and, very carefully, using my biggest serrated knife, cut the layers in half to make four layers. I frosted the cake and put it on a platter. The Book suggests decorating the cake with Brown Sugar Buttercream. I had made this frosting before, and it is delicious. Also, I knew that the dark chocolate frosting and the light brown buttercream would be the perfect color combination to decorate the cake with the monkey design that we'd chosen as the theme for my son's party. But for some reason, the buttercream was a total failure. It turned into a gloppy curdled mess. Plan B was to decorate with some giant pastel-colored sprinkles that I found in my mother-in-law's kitchen cupboard. I think that it looked pretty good just the same. I made another batch of frosting and slathered it on the cupcakes.

This cake was really very good. It was light and sweet and moist. I think that the sour cream has a lot to do with the cake's moist tenderness. The frosting was excellent, too. It was fudgey, creamy and tangy and not too sweet. I know that The Book calls the All-Occasion Yellow Cake "the cornerstone of every cake baker's repertoire," but, as you'll recall, I thought that it was awful. This cake, on the other hand, could easily be my go-to classic birthday cake.

My son's birthday party was a lot of fun, except for the fact that my poor little guy was as sick as a dog that day. When I got him out of bed that morning, he was burning up. When we found out that he had a temperature of 102.6, we called the on-call pediatrician for help. He calmed our fears a bit by telling us to give our boy some Tylenol and let him take it easy. We were all set to call the party off, but the doctor said that we should go ahead anyway. While my son wasn't his happy-go-lucky, fun-loving self, (as you can tell from the less-than-enthusiastic expression on his face), I think that he still had a pretty good time. At least I know that he enjoyed the cake...the frosting he smeared all over his face was evidence of that.

Date Cooked: December 27, 2009 and January 1, 2010
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A

142. Chocolate Truffles (p. 696)

Secretary's Day was last week, and I wanted to do something a little bit out of the ordinary for the person who helps me keep it all together at work. So, while other folks in my office gave their secretaries flowers and wine, I made these home made these chocolate truffles for my secretary.

This recipe comes from Robert Linxe of La Maison du Chocolate in Paris.

There are only three ingredients in this recipe: chocolate, cream and cocoa powder. The Book is very particular about the particular brand of chocolate and cocoa to use. Apparently, Linxe uses Valrhona chocolate, and editors of The Book "didn't even think about substituting a more widely available chocolate." Well, I couldn't find Valrhona, and anyway, I've noticed that in recent years, grocery stores have been stocking more and more varieties of premium chocolate with various percentages of cacao. So, I went with Ghirardelli, and I was still very happy with the results.

First, I finely chopped some of the chocolate and put it in a Pyrex bowl. Then I brought some cream to a boil and poured it over the chocolate. I slowly stirred it until the chocolate melted and it was a smooth genache. The Book says to be careful not to stir too fast to avoid incorporating any air into the mixture. I let the genache stand for about an hour until a spoonful scooped from the bowl kept its shape. Then I lined a baking sheet with parchment paper and spooned the ganache into a pastry bag. I piped little mounds of the genache onto the baking sheet and put it in the freezer for a little while.

After the genache set, I melted some more chocolate in a metal bowl set over a saucepan of boiling water. I put some Ggirardelli cocoa powder in a bowl and got myself organized for some candy making. First I put on a pair of disposable plastic gloves. Next, I smeared some of the melted chocolate on one of the gloves. Working one at a time, I rubbed each of the ganache balls with some melted chocolate and dropped them into the bowl of cocoa. I gently lifted the truffles out of the cocoa with a fork and put them into a sieve and carefully tapped off the excess cocoa. I kept working until I had finished all of the truffles and until I was up to my eyebrows in chocolate. Seriously, these truffles are are not particularly difficult to make, but they are messy!

Since I made these as a gift, I was only able to sample a couple of them. And the few that I did eat were amazing. The first thing that you taste is the intense, earthy flavor of the cocoa power. Next, there's the slight crackle of the thin layer of hardened chocolate surrounding the filling. And finally, there's the cool, creamy, rich and velvetly genache. This is a truly luxurious treat. Well worth the effort for a special occaion or a special person.

Curiously, The Book specifically says that you should not try to double this recipe. If you want more, and I do want more, you should make two batches.

Date Cooked: April 19, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A

111. Chocolate Souffle (p. 840)

The seeds of this Project were sown a year ago when I decided to make the Chocolate Souffle recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking for a homemade Valentine's Day dinner with my wife. So, I thought that it was only fitting that I should make this recipe from The Book for this year's Valentine's dinner.

Souffles always fill people with dread and fear. The recipe itself isn't very hard, though. All you do is melt some chocolate and then stir some egg yolks into it, then fold in some beaten, sweetened egg whites and bake. The hard part is dealing with the anxiety. Will it rise? Or even worse, will if fall? Resisting the urge to open the oven door for a peek takes a level of willpower that most of us don't possess. (Seriously, if you want to make 24 minutes feel like an eternity, put a souffle in the oven and try not to check to see if it's collapsed.)

Well, the good news is that my souffle didn't fall. That's probably because it wouldn't have had too far to go since it didn't rise all that much. I'm not quite sure what happened. Maybe I beat the egg whites too much? Not enough? As The Book says, "the trick is to know when to stop beating" the egg whites. No matter, it was still airy, rich and delicious. Maybe I'll just have to make this an annual tradition and keep at it until I get it right.

Date Cooked: February 14, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: B+

108. Triple-Chocolate Fudge Brownies (p. 689)

What's in this recipe?* Chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate. They are, after all, triple chocolate fudge brownies.

This is the second of the four brownie recipes in The Book that I've made so far. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Homemade brownies are so easy to make, and so delicious, I'll never, ever make boxed brownie mix again.

To make these brownies, I melted some bittersweet chocolate and some unsweetened chocolate with some butter in a metal bowl over a pot of simmering water. No fancy double boiler necessary. After the chocolate and butter have cooled just a bit, I mixed in some sugar and vanilla extract, and then a few eggs, one at a time. Finally, some flour, a bit of salt, and a generous helping of semisweet chocolate chips (I used big chocolate chunks). I spread the batter into a buttered 13 by 9 inch baking dish and cooked them until a toothpick came out just about clean.

These brownies were excellent. They were moist, chewey and, of course, chocolatey. The Book says that the brownies keep for three days in an airtight container at room temperture. I guess I'll just have to take their word on that since my brownies didn't last that long.

Date Cooked: February 8, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: A

*The recipe on epicurious is exactly the same as the one in The Book, except that The Book's recipe is doubled. I wonder if, after the original recipe appeared in the December 1996 issue of Gourmet, readers wrote in to complain that they ate all of the brownies in a single sitting and needed to make another batch right away. To avoid such problems, maybe the editors of The Book just went ahead and doubled the recipe.

80. Old-Fashioned Chocolate Pudding (p. 824)

Pudding always makes me smile. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I can't help associating pudding with Bill Cosby and those commercials he used to do for Jello. Or maybe it's because cool, creamy chocolate-y pudding just makes you feel good.

Up until now, pudding always came from a box for me. But after making this recipe*, I don't think I'll make boxed pudding again. The recipe is pretty easy. I started by whisking together some sugar, cocoa, cornstarch and a pinch of salt in a saucepan. Then I whisked in some whole milk and brought it to a boil for a few minutes. Next, I poured the hot milk mixture in a slow stream into a bowl with a beaten egg, whisking the whole time. Finally I whisked in some chopped semisweet chocolate until it was melted and smooth.

I poured the pudding into four ramekins and put it in the refrigerator to chill. I followed The Book's instruction about covering the surface of the pudding with wax paper to prevent a skin from forming. But, who ever said that pudding skin is a bad thing?

I served the pudding with some fresh whipped cream. How did it taste? Like childhood in a bowl. And like Bill Cosby said, "you can't be a kid without it."



Date Cooked: November 23, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: A

* This recipe is not on epicurious.com.

67. All-Occasion Yellow Cake (with Chocolate Ganache Frosting) (p, 724)

Just to be clear, my wife did offer to make a birthday cake for me. But, in the interest of checking another recipe off for The Project, I insisted on making my own birthday cake.

In retrospect, I should have let my wife make a cake for me, because she would have made this cake from a Hershey's ad -- an excellent cake that I dream about between birthdays. This recipe, on the other hand, made a pretty disappointing birthday cake.

There's nothing unusual about this recipe. Like many other cake recipes, it starts with creaming butter and sugar, and then beating in some eggs and vanilla. Finally, the milk, flour, baking powder and salt are added gradually. I found the finished product to be dry and cotton-y. And I'm not the only one. Teena thought it was dry, too. (Melissa used the batter as a base for a peach cake. The addition of fruit probably helped with the dryness.) The Book says that this recipe takes only ten minutes more than a boxed cake mix and is "spectacularly better," and it promises that this cake will be "the cornerstone of every cake baker's repertoire." Sorry, but I respectfully disagree.

I haven't written this cake recipe off just yet, however. I'll try it again someday when I make the Seven-Minute Frosting. This time, though, I made the Chocolate Ganache Frosting, and it was a disappointment, too. The recipe is very simple. It's just three-quarters of a pound of chopped bittersweet chocolate (I used a big block of fancy chocolate from Whole Foods) and one cup of heavy cream. Bring the cream to a simmer, pour it over the chopped chocolate and whisk it until smooth. The frosting tastes great (how can you go wrong with chocolate and cream?), but it was very thick, which made spreading a challenge. And then it hardened to a solid shell. The cake wasn't as much frosted as it was encased in chocolate.

Next year, I'll let my wife make my birthday cake. But if my birthday cake was a disappointment, my birthday presents were all that I could have hoped and dreamed for. My wife bought me a selection of items from my Kitchen Wishlist, including an OXO digital kitchen scale and the Oxford Companion to Food. The best present, however, is my new Clear Solutions Jumbo Cookbook Holder. This cookbook holder is highly rated by America's Test Kitchen, and it's going to make my life a lot easier as I continue to work on The Project. The Book is so large that it won't fit in my old cookbook holder, and laying the book down on the counter takes up too much space in my too-tiny kitchen. The Clear Solutions Cookbook Holder is adjustable, so that it can accommodate The Book or a single issue of Gourmet with ease. The large, clear page shield gives an unobstructed view of two pages at a time, and it folds down to allow you to turn the page easily. This thing gets the Gourmet All The Way seal of approval!

Date Cooked: October 19, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: D

40. Dark Chocolate Shortbread (p. 688)

As I was flipping through The Book this past Sunday morning, I came across this recipe, and I decided to make it on the spot because I happened to have all of the ingredients on hand and it looked pretty easy to make.

The short list of ingredients is made up of all "pantry items" like butter, superfine sugar, vanilla, salt, all-purpose flour and Dutch process cocoa powder. I wasn't sure whether the Hershey's coca powder in my cupboard was "Dutch process" or not, so I took a chance. Apparently, I was wrong. Dutch process cocoa is treated with an alkali to neutralize its natural acidity. Hershey's is unalkalized, but I don't think that it made a difference, since I thought that the shortbread came out just fine. Based on what I read on the Internets, the Dutch/non-Dutch issue probably only makes a big difference when you need it to cooperate with baking powder, and when you want to make sure that the chocolate taste isn't too bitter.

You start by mashing the softened butter, sugar, vanilla and salt together with a fork (I used a potato masher, 'cause I wasn't messin' around). Then you sift the flour and cocoa over the mixture and keep on mashing until it forms a soft dough. You divide the dough in two and pat it into two six inch circles on an ungreased baking sheet. (Yes, I used a ruler, do you wanna make something of it?) You put the baking sheet, uncovered, in the refrigerator for about a half hour for it to firm up a bit. When my wife saw the baking sheet with two circles of dough on it, she asked, sensibly enough I guess, "Are you making one for me and one for you?"

Then you put it in the oven for 15 minutes "until centers are dry to the touch and edges are slightly darker." I was a little concerned about this because I was using a non-stick baking sheet, which has a tendency to make things brown too fast, so I kept an eagle-eye on my oven temperature, and I pulled the cookies out before they got too crispy around the edges. You cool the shortbread on the baking sheet for about ten minutes, and then, while it's still warm, you cut each round into eight wedges with a large, heavy knife. I did this very carefully so as not to scratch my baking sheet. Then you transfer the wedges to a rack to cool completely.

I liked these cookies quite a bit. They were buttery and chocolatey with that familiar shortbread texture. While they were very crumb-y, they weren't too fragile. (My wife even made a little ice cream sandwich by putting some vanilla-fudge ice cream in between two wedges. Yum!) I though that they tasted like flat, crispy brownies. My wife said that they were like "fancy Oreos." Either way, they were pretty good and they're easy enough to satisfy an emergency chocolate craving if you've got some basic ingredients on hand and about an hour to spare.

Date Cooked: August 10, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: B

26. Katharine Hepburn's Brownies (p. 688)

Legend has it that the infamous gossip columnist , Liz Smith, wrestled this brownie recipe from Katharine Hepburn, the irascible star of two of my favorite films, Desk Set and The African Queen. The Book's version of the recipe comes from food writer Laurie Colwin, who got it from a friend. Apparently, the brownies are a (formerly) secret Hepburn family recipe.

But, the recipe is not without controversy. Not long after Ms. Hepburn passed away in June 2003, a flurry of spirited letters to the editor about the recipe appeared in the pages of The New York Times.

The first was Heather Henderson's fond memories of Ms. Hepburn (who was a neighbor) giving her a stern lecture (over tea and brownies) about staying in school. Henderson included a version of this recipe in her letter. Frederick M. Winship wrote to the Times to protest Henderson's inclusion of cocoa(!) instead of chocolate in the recipe. He wrote that Ms. Hepburn "would never have substituted an ingredient as anemic as cocoa for real, unadulterated chocolate." Winship claimed that Ms. Hepburn gave the real recipe (which is identical to the one in The Book) to his wife when the two women acted together. Henderson defended herself with a response to Winship's letter. She claims that she and her father specifically discussed the cocoa/chocolate issue with Ms. Hepburn herself, and the actress agreed that it didn't make any difference. The key to the recipe, Henderson explains, is the small amount of flour, just a 1/4 cup, which produces the fudgy, chewy texture.

Well, whatever the actual source and formula of the recipe, it's beyond dispute that that the brownies are great. They couldn't be easier to make. You start by melting two ounces of unsweetened chocolate (or cocoa if you're in Henderson's camp) and a stick of butter together in a saucepan. Then you take it off the heat and beat in the sugar, eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour. Finally fold in the chopped walnuts. (The Book says that they're optional, but brownies aren't brownies without nuts.) The best thing about this batter is that you can make it right in the pan. No mixing bowls to clean! Pour it all into a buttered, floured baking pan and cook until a toothpick comes out clean.

These are the quintessential brownies. Nothing special or fancy, no gimmicks. Just pure, rich and fudgy flavor with the chewey texture and that papery-thin, crackled top that all great brownies have. I will never, ever make brownies from a box again!

Just like Katharine Hepburn herself, these brownies are a timeless classic.

Date Cooked: July 19, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: A