Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Happy Joint-Birthday To Me! Pass The GOOD Vanilla


In case the fact that I have a blog devoted entirely to cooking hasn't tipped you off, I thing have a thing for food. Love it. And by extension, I also love The Food Network (except for guy Fieri. He looks like a date rapist.) One of the shows on TFN, if you've never watched it and if you haven't go die in a fire jerkface, is The Barefoot Contessa, featuring Ina Garten.

Now, Ina's a good chef, and she seems to have a never-ending supply of gays at her disposal for dinner parties (seriously, bitch goes through them the way most people go through tissues), but she has this weird habit of always telling you to use the GOOD ingredients. You know, as opposed to the BAD ingredients. Because I was totally confused, and thought I could use the moldy ingredients with the bugs crawling in it. Anyhoo, Vince Lambert gave me the idea for this recipe, and since my mother and I were having a joint birthday (she's January 31st, I'm February 5th) I decided to make it for our birthday.

Beatty's Chocolate Cake

(courtesy of Ina Garten)
  • Butter and flour (to grease the pans)
  • 1 3/4 C. of flour
  • 2 C. of Sugar
  • 3/4 C. of Cocoa Powder (Sorry, but I just can't type "GOOD cocoa powder" without wanting to punch myself in the balls)
  • 2 tsp. of baking soda
  • 1 tsp. of baking powder
  • 1 C. Buttermilk
  • 1/2 C. of vegetable oil
  • 2 extra-large, room temperature eggs
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 1 C. of coffee
Start by preheating the oven to 350 degrees, then butter and flour two 8-inch cake pans. Personally, I just used one 10-inch pan...At least I think it was 10 inches. I didn't really bother measuring or anything. Point is, butter and flour a pan.

Next whisk the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda together in a mixer until they're all whisked together. Meanwhile, in another bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla until it's all mixed together. Now, just slowly pour the wet mixture in with the dry ones until it's well incorporated. Then, slowly again, mix in the cup of freshly-brewed coffee, making sure to scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl so that you can properly mix the batter. If it looks a little thin to you, don't worry, it's supposed to be that way. Believe me, I freaked out a bit too when I saw it, but it's totally okay because the cake is still going turn out all rich and delicious and not watery.

Anyway, if you're using the two 8-inch pans, bake for 30-40 minutes. However, I was flying blind with the 10-incher, so I just used the fork method; stab it with a fork or a knife or a toothpick or anything else pointy on hand until it comes out of the cake clean. Once done, just let them cool, and depending on how many pans you use, either slice it in half or whatever, then just frost the middle to make yourself a nice little layer cake. There's actually a frosting recipe that came with this, but I was in a rush so I just used the canned stuff, which was still good.

2 comments:

  1. Looks nice. I'm going to try and make it... Which I can tell might just fail as Im shit at these thing, but we will see!..

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  2. Happy Belated! Love the blog. Hope you had/are having fun in NY! Had I known.....

    :O)

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