X for Xtra-special celebration cake
This cake turned out to be a lot more extra special than I realized it was going to be. I made this for my last big outing before the world came to a standstill. So yeah, I made it months ago.
I have wanted to make this cake, ever since I can remember I wanted this cake, but this cake was not meant to exist in my childhood. My mom had a favorite chocolate cake recipe which she insisted on using anytime she made a chocolate cake, and while it was a perfectly delicious chocolate cake it was not this cake and I longed for this cake. I longed for a large double layer with lollipops standing at attention showing me how bright and happy a chocolate cake could be.
This as it turns out though is the first time, I have ever made this cake. I don’t know why I never made it as an adult, I had longed after it so as a child, one would think I would have just done it, but, no I didn’t even think of it. Instead I have made several other chocolate cakes, including some not so great ones. One of the best chocolate cakes I have ever made was from a Betty Crocker cookbook at two in the morning. I am never up that late, but a friend was staying over and we decided we wanted cake and totally lost track of the time. I have never been able to replicate that cake again, no matter how many times I retried the recipe it never turned out the same, there can be magic when baking with friends. The worst chocolate cake recipe I ever made was a devil’s food cake from a world cake book, which has many, many wonderful cake recipes, but falls flat on the devil’s food. I didn't understand how a devil’s food cake be so lacking in chocolate, so I tried it twice thinking I probably messed it up the first time before deciding it was just a bad recipe.
In any case this recipe had a wide range to fall into. I figured it couldn’t be worse than the devil’s food cake, it would be almost impossible to be worse than that, but could it be as good as or better than the Betty Croker cake?
Turns out it could be just as good. I was pleasantly surprised at how delicious, fluffy, and moist this cake was, with a wonderful chocolate flavor to it as well. I was also impressed with how well the lollipops actually tasted with cake. I didn’t think I would enjoy that, but it was really good. They totally knew what they were talking about when they made this recipe.
Another thing I found out is this cake is vegan. It uses baking soda and vinegar to rise.
I sure wish I had realized it had no eggs in it when I was a child. I spent a lot of time wishing for eggless desert recipes when we were out of eggs, this would have been perfect. But at the time I was unaware you could even make a cake without eggs. Oh the things we can learn if we just keep looking.
I did however totally erase the vegan-ness by making the frosting with cream and butter. The recipe calls for already made chocolate frosting, so I made one out of my Betty Croker cook book. While none of us are Vegan, in the event someone becomes vegan or we make a vegan friend this would be a good cake to make. I can definitely make vegan frosting.
This ended up being a wonderful cake and everyone enjoyed it. It was so much fun going out with everyone and sending them home with cake. We chitchatted a lot about how we were going to things like that more often and I hope in the future we will be able too.
A funny thing though, we did some carpooling for this outing, using my car as the main car. A month or so later I was cleaning my car and opened up the back, and what did I find? someone had left their piece of cake. Oh no! It made me laugh though because it really showed how much I don’t get in the back of my car.
Another fun thing about this cake is sometimes we play an alphabet game where we choose a subject and try to name something that starts with every letter of the alphabet. thinking od a food or dessert to go with X is hard but we always fall back on this cake. anytime we have a new person play they tell us you can't use that for X, Extra starts with an E! we are quick to let them know not in the Alpha bakery book! so this cake always wins.
This is one I will make again when I can share it with everyone again. And when I do, I will make sure none of it is left in my car.
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