Yellow Cake with Chocolate Frosting
Living at 9350' above sea level, cakes are what I have the most
trouble with baking. What follows here is a recipe originally from King
Arthur Baking but altered by their instructions
with some work in a spread sheet to move from sea level to 9350'. I
use 3 8" pans that I bought from King
Arthur.
Cake
Ingredients
- 315 g King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
- 1¼ tsp salt
- ⅝ tsp baking powder
- 5 large eggs
- 347 granulated sugar
- 1 Tbsp (14g) vanilla extract
- ⅛ tsp almond extract, optional, for enhanced flavor
- 323 g milk (whole milk preferred)
- 4 Tbsp (57g) butter, cut into pats
- ⅓ cup (67g) vegetable oil
Directions
- Preheat oven to 340º
F
(note the temp is for 9350')
- If you do not have 8" rounds of parchment paper, invert one of
your pans on a cutting board with parchment paper underneath,
cut the paper using the pan as a guide. It is OK that the paper
will be slightly larger than the interior bottom of the pan.
- Lightly grease (butter) 3 8" pans, then line the bottoms with
parchment paper cut to circles and grease the paper. Note you
also grease the bottom of the pan before putting the paper on.
- In a small bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder.
Mix well with a fork and set aside
- In a large mixing bowl, either using an electric hand mixer or
a stand mixer with whisk attachment, beat the eggs, sugar,
vanilla, and almond extract, until thickened and light gold in
color, about 2 minutes at medium-high speed. If your stand mixer
doesn’t have a whisk attachment, beat for 5 minutes using the
paddle attachment. The batter should fall in thick ribbons from
the beaters, whisk, or paddle.
- Add the dry ingredients to the mixture in the bowl and mix —
by hand or on low speed of a mixer — just enough to combine.
Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl, then mix again briefly,
to fully incorporate any residual flour or sticky bits.
- In a saucepan set over medium heat or in the microwave, bring
the milk just to a simmer. Remove the pan from the heat and add
the butter and oil, stirring by hand until the butter has
melted.Slowly mix the hot milk-butter-oil mixture into the
batter, stirring on low speed of a mixer until everything is
well combined. Scrape the bowl and mix briefly, just until
smooth.
- Divide the batter evenly between the three pans. I use a scale
to help with this.
- Bake the cakes until the edges are pulling away from the sides
of the pan, a toothpick inserted into the center comes out
clean, and the top feels set. This should take about 25 to 30
minutes for three 8” pans, (note this is different from sea
level). I found that the tempurature that King Arthur
wants is too high. At 25 min, the toothpick is clean. The
internal temp is between 185º
F and 190º F
any warmer and the cake will be dry, not moist.
- Remove the cakes from the oven, carefully loosen the edges,
and allow them to cool for 15 minutes in the pans. Then turn
them out of the pans and transfer them to a rack, right-side up,
to cool to room temperature.
Frosting
Note, this frosting is really good and will probably be used on my
Angel Food Cake
Ingredients
- 106g (1¼) natural cocoa powder
- 454g (4 cups) confectioners' sugar, divided
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 74g (⅓ cup) hot water
- 14g 1Tbsp) vanilla extract
- 284g (20 Tbsp) butter, softened
Directions
- In your mixer with the whisk attachment start on low and mix
the cocoa powder, around 1 cup of the confectioners’ sugar (no
need for precision), and the salt.
- Add in the water and vanilla, scraping the bowl if necessary,
until combined
- Add the butter and remaining confectioners’ sugar, stirring to
combine. Using an electric hand mixer or a stand mixer with
paddle attachment, beat the frosting at medium-high speed for 1
to 2 minutes, until lightened in color and fluffy, stopping
halfway through to scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl.
- Check consistancy of the frosting. If it seems too stiff to
spread add water 1 Tbsp at a time. I had to add one extra Tbsp
Cake Assembly
- If the layers have too much of a dome, use a bread knife to
remove some of the domes to flatten
- Place one of the cake layers on a serving plate, bottom up. If
the dome is not big, do not bother to trim it.
- Spread the bottom layer with enough frosting for a ¼” to ½”
thick layer. Center the second layer bottom-side down.
This layer probably should have its dome trimmed. Press gently
to set it in place.
- Frost the top of the second layer and put the top layer on
bottom down, again gently pressing in place.
- Finish frosting the cake.
- I used a serrated bread knife after the frosting is applied to
help smooth the frosting out.
- Notes: You can refrigerate after a thin frosting for a crumb
coat, but the cake recipe here at 9350 was very firm and did not
crumble when frosting so I did not need a crumb coat
Ratios for sea level to 9350'
Since this recipe at 9350 works so well, I thought I would put in a
ratio table between the two:
|
Sea Level |
9350 |
Ratio |
flour gms |
240 |
315 |
1.31 |
salt tsp |
1.25 |
1.25 |
1.00 |
baking powder tsp |
2 |
0.625 |
0.31 |
sugar gms |
397 |
347 |
0.87 |
eggs |
4 |
5 |
1.25 |
vanilla tbsp |
1 |
1 |
1.00 |
milk gms |
227 |
323 |
1.42 |
butter Tb |
4 |
4 |
1.00 |
veg oil gms |
67 |
67 |
1.00 |
Last update 11/08/2022
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