I have a new love. It is butter and sugar and eggs and perfection.
This came about because I volunteered to make a cake for my friend Parwana’s surprise birthday party last week. I knew she liked chocolate, but even with all the baking I’d done so far this year, I still hadn’t come across a truly delectable chocolate cake recipe yet. So I trotted off to one of my most favorite places in the world (the library) to peruse the baking section. Nothing really popped out at me until I came across this beauty:
“The Essential Baker” by Caroll Bloom (amazon associates link)
The chocolate section of this divine cookbook contained recipes for tarts, soufflés, madeleines, cookies, brownies, cheesecakes, roulades, profiteroles, and, of course, “plain” old cakes. What baker could resist the siren call of a Devilish Chocolate Layer Cake with Caramel Buttercream? Not this one, that’s for sure.
Sadly, as is to be expected when I am in the kitchen, there were setbacks. I thought I followed the recipe exactly, but somehow when all was said and done, the batter was stiffer than any cake batter I have ever made. Like, solid, essentially. Like, I plopped globs of it into the pan and then nearly broke a spatula trying to spread them. Like, I cried. I didn’t want to add more liquid only to find I had ruined the recipe and thereby wasted 6 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, a stick of butter, 3 eggs, and a whole tablespoon of my good Mexican vanilla. I also didn’t want to bake it as it was, fearing the absolute worst, but I just rolled up my sleeves, stuck it in the oven and hoped for the best. Lo and behold, it actually turned out pretty good, though perhaps a bit dry.
If I make it again, I will by all means keep adding sour cream until the thing looks more like cake batter than like play-dough.
But the cake wasn’t even the best part. Oh no.
Next I got started on making the caramel. This bit was actually really simple, which makes it sort of horrendous that I had to do it not once, not twice, but three times. But at least at this point I was laughing. (I don’t have nightmares about throwing away sugar the way I do about other, more precious ingredients.) The recipe called for me to leave my sugar mixture boiling on the stove, on high heat, for 10 minutes. For the first go-round, I had it set on one notch down from high for about 6 minutes when I turned around to see my kitchen full of smoke, and my pan full of black goop. Whoops.
For the 2nd go-round, I had the heat set one notch lower, and all was well for the first ten minutes. Then I tried mixing in some cream with a silicone spatula. Bad, bad idea, unless you want your guests eating silicone-flavored caramel. That puppy melted instantly. Grrr.
Needless to say, I used a metal spoon for the third go-round, and my caramel turned out just magnifique.
At last, at last, it was time to make the buttercream frosting. I looked at step one and immediately realized I had done a major cooking no-no: I did not read over this recipe one single time before I got started on it. If I had, I would have realized step one involved eggs. I have never made frosting with eggs, and in fact have actively avoided even the contemplation of such an act for fear of the dread salmonella monster. But at this point, it was far and away much too late to think about subbing in a different kind of frosting. For better or worse, I was making this extremely intimidating one.
My terror increased incrementally with every ingredient I threw into the mix.
Step two called for 1 1/4 cups of granulated sugar. My normal recipe calls for 4 cups of powdered sugar. Step three called for an entire pound of butter. My normal recipe calls for half that. My mixer appeared to be full of curds and whey. The outlook seemed bleak.
However, having few other choices, I just let the KitchenAid keep doing its thing, and, hallelujah, the frosting came together until it looked nice and smooth! But when I grabbed a spoon to taste, I was still anticipating a mouthful of butter.
I cannot even begin to tell you how happy I was to be proven wholly and utterly wrong! That frosting was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten. The texture was silky and smooth; the taste was simply phenomenal. Unlike my normal “spoonful of sugar” buttercream, in this I could actually detect the subtle flavors of vanilla and caramel. It was sublime.
I didn’t even realize until I did some researching the next day that I had just made a French buttercream (using whole eggs), as opposed to an Italian or Swiss (just egg whites) or the regular old American kind (no eggs at all). The French sure have an awful lot to offer this world, don’t they? Their frosting is also known as pâte á bombe. (I choose to amuse myself by translating that as “bomb batter.” I’m assuming the egg yolks are the “bombes,” but if any knowledgeable cuisiniers are reading this, please correct me.)
Et voila, le gâteau!
And, as you may have noticed, my cake had another international aspect that I haven’t mentioned yet. I was thrilled when Parwana walked up to get a look at it and said, “I see Dari!!!” She has only lived in the U.S. for a year, and knowing that every day she has to deal with homesickness, culture shock, and all the other difficulties that come from being far from home, I wanted to put a little something Afghan into her cake. I had just been crossing my fingers, hoping that the internet hadn’t led me astray when I tried to hunt down the equivalent of “happy birthday” in her native language. Evidently my efforts were at least somewhat legible 
Oh, and an interesting bit of trivia: Parwana says that bakeries in Afghanistan commonly put both Dari and English on their cakes, even though English-speakers are obviously greatly outnumbered there.
Maybe this should inspire a new international goodwill venture: Bakers Without Borders!
Tags: birthday, chocolate cake, dari, french buttercream
