Chocolate Cake

About a week ago, for a friend of mine's birthday, I made my first from-scratch cake. It actually happened quite by accident. I was walking through the kitchen, a few things fell into a bowl, and out of the oven popped a cake! (Okay - it wasn't that much of an accident. What really happened was...)

Bryan went into the kitchen to bake a cake. There was no box of cake mix to be found.

"Look again!" I insisted, standing on tip-toe.

"I can actually see above this shelf." said my 6"1' husband, "We don't have any."

"Oh."

The wheels of my brain are turning furiously. With his right foot in a cast, Bryan can't drive right now, and I loathe going to the store. I was also remembering that during my last 27 fling boogie when I dove into my recipe stash, I had kept a recipe for chocolate cake because I really wanted to try it. Well, what was I waiting for? Here was my chance to avoid the store and make a cake I could be proud of!

"I can make one."

"Oh, you mean from scratch?" he looked surprised.

"Yeah. If I can bake bread, I'm sure I can make a cake." Now he looked cautious. That settled it, stubbornness set in as if he had just said "No, I don't think you can make a cake" and I was now determined to do this.

(My husband was really trying to be a nice guy - I'd like to point out. He knows that I take it pretty hard when things go wrong in the kitchen - and we had four guests coming over for dinner that night. The same six of us who endured the bean fiasco, incidentally.)

So I headed for the cupboard and fished out the recipe a co-worker had given me nearly a year ago. (By the way, thanks Heather!)

Heather's Chocolate Cake

• 1 cup margarine, softened
• 2 1/2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup Dutch processed cocoa, sifted
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups HOT water

Let's get started!

In a mixing bowl, cream margarine and sugar.

Add the eggs,

one at a time, beating well after each addition. 

Beat on high speed until light and fluffy.  Stir in vanilla.

Combine dry ingredients;

add alternatively to the creamed mixture with the hot water.

I must add, at this point, that your batter is likely to look much runnier than this, because I got so caught up in taking blog pictures that I accidentally left out almost half of the water the recipe called for.  Oops!

Pour into three greased and floured 9-inch round baking pans (or one 13 x 9 x 2 inch pan)

(I only have two round pans, so I also made a batch of mini cup cakes.  They were super cute.)

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the middle comes out clean. Cool on wire racks for 10 minutes

before removing from pan to cool completely.

After cakes are completely cool,

frost with desired frosting.  She suggests caramel frosting.  

Stay tuned to see what frosting I made instead... as well as the finished cake!

Making Your Own Sourdough Starter

Repeat after me:

"Making sourdough starter is VERY EASY.
It just takes TIME."

In fact, according to S. John Ross at Gourmand Bleu, if you can mix flour and water together, you can make starter. And you can. It is just that easy. As John states in his article on the topic, "People who didn't believe the Earth was round did this for millenia." A couple years ago when I first tried cooking with sourdough I successfully made my starter according to the instructions he provides.

However, this time around I found a great article on The Fresh Loaf that tells step-by-step what to do, includes some pictures, and also explains why it works. It suggests things to overcome problems that different people have had when making their starter. It may be solving problems you're not going to have - but better to be safe than sorry, right?

Click here to see the post submitted by SourdoLady that I used to make my starter.

The biggest difference is that it starts out using pineapple juice instead of water. Evidently, this lowers the PH and makes the conditions favorable for wild yeast to activate and grow. We are also using a whole grain flour, such as wheat or rye. The wild yeast is present on the grains. It suggests milling the grains yourself - but let's not go crazy! I pulled my rye flour out of the cupboard (where it had been sitting for over a year, I'm absolutely certain) and had no trouble at all.

First day I mixed these in a small glass jar:
2 Tablespoons of rye flour
2 Tablespoons pineapple juice from a can
and I let it sit for 24 hours at room temperature. (Oh- and let's just be honest here too, sometimes it would be more like 36 hours if I got busy or forgot. It won't kill it - so long as it is getting fed fairly regularly.)

Below is a "feeding" such as happens on the second and third days. I added:
2 Tablespoons of juice &
2 Tablespoons rye flour

You may notice I am using a plastic thingy (left-over from my bachelorette party, as a matter of fact - thanks, ladies) to stir. Follow my example and use a plastic or wooden spoon. Sourdough starter doesn't like metal.  (Oops!  Guess that was an old wives tale.  For the real scoop on sourdough and metal check out this page about sourdough myths.)

Stir it up.
It is ready to sit again in my kitchen.
Day four (and the days following) you have to get rid of some of that starter, because the jar will be filling up from all those feedings. So you stir it down, measure out 1/4 cup, and discard the rest. (Sorry for the picture quality - this feeding happened at night.)

At this point you can use whatever kind of flour you want. I went with all purpose, because it was what I had on hand. But unbleached would be good if you have it. Whatever you choose, add 1/4 a cup to your starter.

Now here we are adding 1/4 cup lukewarm filtered (or spring) water. Let's get real here. If you have a Brita, you can filter it through that and use that. Or you can set the water out for a few days on your counter to remove the chlorine from it - but worse comes to worse - just use tap water. I did - and all is well.

Mix it back up.

You are going to continue this process once a day until you see bubbles on the side of the jar like this:

And on the top, like this:
To improve the flavor that your starter will produce in the bread you bake, go ahead and leave it at room temperature for a few more weeks, feeding it like this. You may begin to bake with it at this point. When you are happy with the flavor (or more likely, when you are tired of feeding everyday and throwing so much out) stick it in the fridge. It will slow down the fermentation process (how quickly your wild yeasts "eats") and you should only have to feed it once a week or so.

When you are storing it in the fridge, you will need to "revive" or feed you start and leave it at room temperature a bit before using the starter to bake. Most recipes will include this as the first step.


Congratulations! You have now created a healthy sourdough starter. Just think of the things you can begin to bake: sourdough bread, english muffins, pancakes, pizza crusts...