For my best friend’s 21st birthday, I baked a yellow cake with a luscious chocolate frosting that made it all perfect and yummy.
The cake was easy to make, and I divided it into 2 7-inch moulds and pour the extra in a smaller pan. Then I dabbed some Baileys onto the cake to give it a more adult-ish flavour before frosting it with the perfect frosting. The frosting, not only is it easy to make, is not cloyingly sweet. Most recipes will call for substantial amount of icing sugar to be added so that it will allow the frosting to be piped or swirled, but most of the time I will cut the icing sugar by more than half so that it’s not too terribly sweet. However, this results in the frosting to be less stiff and made it harder to pipe patterns on the cake. This frosting used unsweetened chocolate (I used Hershey’s unsweetened chocolate) and it is so good (“so good” is really, truly an understatement), because not only is the frosting creamy and rich, it is not terribly sweet that people will hesitate to ask for seconds.
Yellow Cake with Instant Fudge Frosting
INGREDIENTS
Yellow Cake
- 305 grams plain flour
- 105 grams corn flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1.5 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 225 grams unsalted butter, softened
- 150 grams sugar
- 2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 4 eggs, at room temperature
- 500 ml buttermilk, well-shaken
Instant Fudge Frosting
- 170 grams unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
- 500 grams icing sugar, sift if you’re not using a food processor to make the frosting
- 340 grams unsweetened butter, softened
- 6 tablespoons half-and-half or whole milk
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
INSTRUCTIONS
Yellow Cake
- Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Butter 2 9-inch round cake pans and line the bottom with parchment paper and butter the parchment again.
- Sift together the flour, corn flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a bowl. Set the bowl aside. In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy, then beat in the vanilla. Turn the speed down to low and beat in eggs, one at a time, beating for 1 minute until fully incorporated and scraping the sides before adding the next egg. At low speed, beat in buttermilk until combined. Fold in the flour in three batches. Divide the batter evenly and rap the pans on the counter several times to eliminate air bubbles.
- Bake for 35 to 45 minutes until golden and a skewer inserted to the middle of the cake comes out clean. Cool the cake in the pan for 10 minutes before running a sharp knife or rubber spatula along the sides of the cake to loosen the cake. Turn the cake out and let it cool completely.
- To keep the cake, wrap the cake in 2 layers of plastic wrap, place it in a freezer ziploc bag and stash it into the freezer.
Instant Fudge Frosting
- Using a food processor: Place all the ingredients in a food processor and pulse to incorporate, then process until the frosting is smooth.
- Using a electric mixer: Cream the butter and icing sugar until fluffy. Beat in melted chocolate and then stir in milk and vanilla extract.
NOTES
- Adapted from Smitten Kitchen’s Best Birthday Cake
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