Family Chocolate Cake Recipe

This Family Chocolate Cake recipe is not my family's -- it belongs to the Wenzel family whose son Ryan worked for me a few years ago. It was passed down from Ryan's paternal grandmother and the go-to cake for all family birthdays. After he shared the recipe, I baked one for his farewell party. Although it was delicious, and a big hit, I never got around to blogging about it. Until now.

We celebrated my niece Jessica's birthday last weekend because it happened to fall on Honeyball Day, our family tradition where we make strufoli, an Italian confection from my husband's childhood. I'm not a fan, but it's a fun day. However, I am a big fan of this old-fashioned chocolate cake with white frosting, also called "gravy" frosting. You'll see why below.

Start by melting the butter and chocolate in water.

When it's smooth, remove from the heat and let it cool to room temperature.  Because chocolate is the star, it's better to use good quality (i.e., not a supermarket brand) chocolate. I used Scharffen Berger, one of my favorites. 

Next, start the batter.  It really couldn't be easier.

Add the chocolate mixture to the batter and incorporate.

After adding the dry ingredients and sour cream, pour the batter into greased and floured pans.

Remove from the oven, cool on a rack for about ten minutes, then turn the cakes out from the pan to completely cool. Ryan once skipped this important step, and frosted a warm cake, with rather unfortunate consequences.

While the cake is cooling, begin the frosting. It uses flour (!)) which is why it is often referred to as gravy icing. It's a very old recipe and one that should be returned to the American frosting repertoire. I screwed this up the first time by overcooking the flour and water mixture. You want it to be thickened, but not so much that it congeals, as below. Lesson learned.

Cream the butter and sugar, then add the cooled "gravy" mixture and continue beating until light and fluffy.

Frost the cake. As you can see at the top, this didn't make quite enough frosting to completely cover two nine-inch layers, so I made a naked cake, all the rage these days. However, if you plan to do so, even off the cakes completely (cut the domes flat) so the side frosting doesn't gather in the gap.

Wenzel Family Chocolate Cake and White Icing

Production notes: I followed this recipe exactly, except I substituted butter for the margarine.  I baked it in two nine-inch round pans -- but didn't have enough frosting. If you want to fully frost a two-layer cake, increase the frosting amounts by 50 percent. I baked the cakes for 25 minutes. Check for doneness at 20 minutes by inserting a toothpick into the centers. (Also, Ryan just let me know that the original recipe calls for semisweet chocolate, though the unsweetened works fine.)

The birthday girl, Jessica, below. Not only was she elected to the Alpha Omega honor society in medical school, and matched to her first choice for residency, she is about to become chief resident in pediatrics (a specialty that will be very welcome in our family in a few months!), and plans to follow with a fellowship in pediatric intensive care.

White Coconut Cake with Fluffy Frosting

We celebrated the DH's birthday on Saturday with a cake made from a recipe that's probably a bit older than he is.  White Coconut Cake (his request) is an old-fashioned white cake (meaning only egg whites, no yolks). The only coconut is the shredded variety that's placed atop the frosting.

This is the first time I've seen a cake recipe calling for egg whites that are added directly to the batter without whipping separately, a real time (and bowl) saver.  It's a very easy cake. In fact, I prepared it while the DH was taking one spin on his bike around Prospect Park -- it's that quick to make.

Mrs. Dumford, the recipe's author, suggested a seven-minute frosting, and I found one, called Fluffy Frosting, in my collection.  Seven-minute frosting, once a standard in mid-20th century kitchens, has fallen out of favor (often replaced with "buttercream" made from butter and confectioner's sugar), but it does have its appeal. It contains no butter -- just egg whites, sugar, corn syrup and water.  The magic happens during the seven minutes of whipping the ingredients in a double boiler.  The result? Everyone (family members, and special guest Andrew, the DS's friend and a champion dessert eater) thought I'd frosted the cake with marshmallow fluff!

Whole Foods, where we'd shopped that morning, didn't have grocery store sweetened coconut, so I bought the large flaked unsweetened coconut, organic (of course!). It worked perfectly, as the cake and frosting were pretty sweet, just like the DH.

Begin by creaming the butter and sugar. Mine didn't get as "light as whipped cream" as Mrs. Dumford instructed, but it didn't matter.

Add in the unwhipped egg whites.

The batter is thick, so coax it to the pan edges, using an offset spatula, butter knife or the back of a spoon.

After 20 minutes, test the cake with a toothpick. If it comes out clean, the cake is done. If not, bake another five minutes or so.

I failed to take photos of the frosting in progress. It's easy, but tedious, as the cook needs to stand over a hot stove while mixing it for seven loooong minutes or until it holds stiff peaks.

Production notes: I followed the recipe exactly, adding in the lemon extract and vanilla at the end. I also didn't beat as vigorously as instructed because overbeating can result in a tough cake. Be sure the butter is at room temperature. I baked it at 350 F for 25 minutes.

I followed this recipe exactly.  After the vanilla is added, beat for another minute or so.  I also don't have a double boiler, so I fashioned one by placing a bowl over a saucepan of  boiling water. This would make enough for a three-layer cake.

Birthday celebration, and the birthday boy.

Lemon Queen's Cake

My friend Jay turned 50 last week and insisted on a surprise birthday party adventure.  His saintly partner Stephen more than rose to his demand  the task, orchestrating a chauffeured limousine journey through Manhattan and Brooklyn, stopping to pick up gift-bearing friends at locations meaningful to Jay. i.e, theaters, churches and restaurants. When the ginormous white car pulled up in front of my place, I had just finished frosting (badly, as you can see) a birthday cake.

I chose this vintage Lemon Queen's Cake recipe for its age (50+) and name, of course, but also because it had a coconut frosting and the recipe card had a "very good" notation on it.  This cake is "very good," but also complicated -- it has a cake component, a lemon curd filling and a frosting.

The first order of business is to make the lemon filling because it needs time to chill. For some reason, it never thickened properly.  (If you make this cake, I'd recommend using a more modern recipe for lemon curd from Martha Stewart, David Lebovitz or Rose Levy Berenbaum.)

The cake itself is a true white cake, i.e., it contains no egg yolks. (The four yolks are used in the lemon curd, typical of the 1940s waste-not want-not culture.) The method calls for mixing the batter, beating the egg whites separately and folding them in carefully.

You'll have to smooth out the batter with the back of a spoon or offset spatula before baking.

Let the layers cool completely before filling and frosting.

Using a serrated knife held horizontally, you can slice the "dome" off of each layer, making it easier to fill and stack them.

This cake does not travel well, especially in the back of a stretch limousine filled with champagne swilling passengers.  At the party, the photographer (yes, there was photographer who documented the entire day), called me aside to alert me to the condition of the cake below.  No worries -- I just took a couple of forks and re-positioned the layers.  It helps to have several glasses of wine before attempting this maneuver.

I thought it looked ok until Diane, another guest, said, I see you made a three-layer cake.  Well, friends, the number of layers should not be obvious -- the frosting should be smooth enough so as not to reveal the cake's structure.

In any case, the party caterers did an excellent job slicing this eight-inch cake to serve a lot of guests.

Below are some of the celebrants with the birthday boy.

Production notes: Grease and flour the pans (don't just grease them).  Choose another proven and tested lemon curd recipe.And always use butter, not shortening, for the butter cream. The frosting has a raw egg, so use a fresh farm one, not one from the supermarket.

Enter the Cake Contest!

Henry Street Settlement, on Manhattan's Lower East Side, is hosting a big block party on Saturday, May 3, to celebrate the 147th birthday of Lillian Wald, it's founder, as part of the first-ever Lower East Side History Month.

One of the highlights is a cake contest.  All amateur bakers are invited to enter.  Just whip up a birthday cake, and bring it to 265 Henry Street by 1 p.m. on May 3rd.  Register by writing slarosa@henrystreet.org.

Cakes will be judges on appearance, creativity, taste and interpretation of the birthday theme.   Prizes will be awarded and your cake will be featured on Henry Street's website and on its social media channels.  Judges include Tara Bench, Food and Entertaining Editor of the Ladies Home Journal; Serena Solomon, of DNinfo; and Ed Litvak and Traven Rice of The LoDown.

Pictured above is last year's grand prize winner -- a beauty entered by Jillian Besemer, a reader of this blog!

Above is the second-place winning cake, baked by Peggy Coon.  And below, baker Kira Wizner, took a page out of Lillian Wald's book to create the third-place winner.

My "Birthday" Pound Cake

Today I was going to celebrate the coincidence of my birthday falling on the same day as the New York Daily News was scheduled to feature a story about my blog.  Well, there must have been some bigger breaking news (Brangelina  changing a diaper, perhaps?) than my cake blog, because the story didn't appear. I'm hoping it will run next week.

When the Daily News sent a photographer to my house last Thursday morning to take some pictures, I decided to bake a cake so there would be something to photograph besides me.  This c. 1945 recipe for pound cake seemed perfect. And it was.  I put the batter together in a matter of minutes early in the morning -- it could not have been easier.  I popped it in the oven, and even though the recipe author cautions NOT to open the oven door for the first hour, I cheated.  And the cake was still fine. 

We all enjoyed the cake; even the Daily News photographer posed while eating a slice for breakfast.  I brought the cake to work that morning but fearing that the co-workers in my department were suffering from cake fatigue, I brought it over to the Abrons Arts Center where one of the artistic types who works there was overheard saying that it was the best pound cake he'd ever had.

It would have been lovely plain, but I made a simple confectioner's sugar and milk icing for it.  If I'd been slightly more alert that morning, I would have used lemon juice instead of milk; the citrus note would have played well against the creamy vanilla-ness of the cake.

And if anyone's wondering what cake I ate on my actual birthday, there were two. Some lovely colleagues brought me cake (and cookies) from Momofuko that were beyond delicious, and at dinner, my daughter's boyfriend had arranged for a truly special raw chocolate cake (with candle!) to be served to me. Believe me, its flavor was wonderful and complex, the perfect ending to a terrific meal.