Yellow Layer Cake with Rich Chocolate Cream Frosting

This weekend, I was fiending to bake something decadent. After drooling over all 350 recipes in my Baking Illustrated book (courtesy of Monkey), I settled on a simple yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

This book is great. Following the Cooks Illustrated approach, it gives you a detailed scientific break down of how they arrived at each particular recipe. For this cake, I was surprised to see they used a two-stage procedure where you mix the butter with all the dry ingredients (plus sugar) first, rather than the traditional creaming of just butter and sugar, then adding the dry ingredients. Never heard of this! The results were great. From the fluffy batter, I got two light buttery layers with plenty of eggy goodness. The frosting was pretty easy too. You basically melt chocolate in some hot heavy cream. Done and done! Topped with raspberries, this cake was the perfect ending to a cozy rainy Sunday.


Imagine eating this with a cold glass of milk.


Become one with the cake.



Yellow Layer Cake
Courtesy of Baking Illustrated

1 3/4 cup (7 oz) plain cake four, sifted, plus more for dusting pans
4 large eggs, room temp
1/2 cup whole milk, room temp
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups (10 1/2 oz) sugar
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
16 tbs (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened but cool, cut into 16 pieces

Adjust oven rack to lower middle position and heat to 350 degrees. Grease 2 9-inch round cake pans and cover bottom with parchment paper. Grease parchment and dust pans with flour, tap out excess.

Beat eggs, milk, and vanilla with fork in small bowl; measure out 1 cup mixture and set aside. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in bowl of standing mixer. Beat at low speed to blend (~30 sec). Add butter 1 piece at a time; mix until butter and flour begin to clump and look sand and pebbly, with pieces about pea size, 30 to 40 sec after all butter is added. Add reserved 1 cup egg mixture and mix at lowest speed until incorporated (5-10 sec). Increase speed to med-high and beat until light and fluffy (1 min). Add remaining egg mixture in slow steady stream, taking ~30 sec. Stop mixer, scrape sides, and continue beating med-high speed until thoroughly combined, and batter looks slightly curdled (~15 sec).

Divide batter equally between pans. Baking until tops are light gold and tookpick comes out clean (20-25 min). Cool on wire rack 10 min, loosen, invert and cool completely

Rich Chocolate Cream Frosting
16 oz bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped fine
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/3 cup light corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract

Place chocolate in heatproof bowl. Bring heavy cream to simmer in saucepan over med-high heat; pour over chocolate. Add corn syrup and let stand 3 min. Whisk gently; stir in vanilla. Refrigerate 1 to 1 1/2 hours, stirring every 15 min until spreadable consistency. This frosting does not keep well, should be served within a day.