No Frosting Necessary

I don't understand why people would want to frost the hell out of a perfectly good cake. I mean, if the cake itself is good, they why do it? And if you do, why make it so thick? I had a cake once that had saccharine frosting that was layered on so thick that my head felt like it was going to implode from all my blood vessels constricting.

That's my rant for the day I guess. Anyway, on to the main point. I finally bought a cake pan; a 9" Wilton round cake pan. It took me forever to decide to actually buy one and then after that it took another eon for me to select a particular brand. Therefore, I decided to buy the Wilton nonstick 9" round, since they come with lovely handles for easy manipulation. I only bought 1 though since at that point I still wasn't sure if it would be a good choice or not, and about $5-$6, it was worth a risk. When I finally used it to bake a cake, it worked perfectly. It browns the bottom and edges a dark brown, which has great flavor and a firmer, almost crisp, crust. The handles made turning during baking and handling overall a lot easier too. Good surface. With a light run around the sides with a spreader, the cake almost seemed to fall out of the pan.


On to the recipe itself. I used and adjusted a basic One-Bowl Chocolate Cake from Better Homes and Garden's New Cook Book; however, I didn't do it all in one bowl. I just kinda did mine in steps since I don't have an electric mixer. If I did I might have done it all in one bowl...but ya~

For this recipe I had to buy some cocoa powder, so I settled for Dutch processed. The original recipe I followed only called for milk, so I used 2% milk and I added some sour cream, which is supposed to add tenderness (that line sounds kinda weird, doesn't it?). Another thing was that the cake came with a Rocky Road Frosting, which I decided not to try since I don't really like frosting on my cake. Turned out I was right in doing this because it needed no frosting what so ever. It was moist, just sweet enough, and perfect just by itself.


I believe a good cake can hold it's own~ Though it is true frosting makes it more presentation quality. In those cases, I would make a special, mildly sweet, and frost on only a thin layer.

Makes one 9" round layer

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (Dutch processed makes for a darker, less red, cake)
  
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 baking soda (originally: 1/4 tsp)
  
• 1/4 tsp of salt
• 1/2 + 1/8 cup of (2%) milk, room temp
  
• Enough (light) sour cream to make milk total: 3/4 cup (a little over 1 tbsp)
  
• 1/4 cup butter, room temp, and cut into 8 cubes/pieces (originally: margarine)
  
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 egg, room temp
  

1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. Spray a 9" round cake pan with cooking spray, line the bottom with parchment, spray bottom again, and lightly flour pan. Set aside. (I just spray it all once, put the parchment on the bottom, touch it till it gets oil all over the one side, and then flip it around and press in against the pan).
   
3. Use scoop and level method (scoop out an overfilled amount of flour and level) and to measure out one cup of flour. Mix by first stirring flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar together in a bowl, then sift 1-2x, using another bowl between transfers. Set aside
   
4. In another bowl (if you used another bowl when you were sifting the dry ingredients back and forth, use the empty one you have after step 3) mix the eggs, vanilla, milk, and sour cream together until well blended/mixed. Set aside
5. Using a whisk, add 2 cubes of butter into the dry ingredients at a time and mix by pressing the butter into the dry ingredients until all the butter is distributed in the dry ingredients and are about the size of small rocks. Add half of the wet mixture into the dry ingredients, whisk rather vigorously until the dry ingredients are all incorporated (~20-30 seconds). Then, mix in the rest of the wet mixture until a smooth batter forms. Scrap the bowl down and mix w/ just a few more turns.
6. Pour batter into prepared pan. Even out the batter and put bake at 350F for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. (Remember to turn the cake around 1/2 way through baking, so as to ensure even cooking).
   

In the end, I think you can use any method you want to mix this cake up, providing you are using some type of cake making method. I hope this works out well for everyone who decides to try it. if you really wanted to, you could even frost it...if you want to. I personally feel its perfect the way it is ^_^. Time to study for my Calc and Chem midterm!...crap~

My Pizza Experiment

I'm bored, so I might as well just blog about some random stuff that most people would find nonsensical. Oh well, bare with me here.

Let me first start off by saying that this long entry is a random story of how I made a pizza, and it is a review of how my newly purchased Calphalon Pizza Pan worked out.

Okay, so I had decided to make a pizza at home last week (also decided to do it because my mom and sister were asking when I would do it again. Yes, again. I had tried making one before, and I would rather not think about that first experience ever again...yes). Well, anyway, I was thinking that since I had some extra marinara sauce frozen in the freezer from my first attempt I should try using it up.

First step was to get the tools. My last fiasco relied on a few cookie sheets, and I didn't wanna do go through that ordeal again. I therefore did some research on what I should buy for the baking tool. I was considering getting a baking stone, but in the end thought it might be a little excessive and, subsequently, settled on getting a pizza pan/pizza crisper. I visited a lot of websites to read consumer review s and product descriptions and eventually decided to get the Kitchen Essentials Gold Touch 16" Pizza Pas by Calphalon. I bought mine at Target for a pretty good price.

Okay, at this point I have my pan and it just so happened that I had all the ingredients in my fridge already, all that was left was for me to make the pizza dough. For the dough I followed a 2006 Cooking Light pizza dough recipe I had looked up online. I used the recipe before and the finished product's texture was pretty decent, but it did kinda lack strong flavor on its own. So I added some dried oregano into the dough this time and next time I might add a little olive oil into the mix too because, in retrospect, it was a tad dry...ish... Oh, and another thing about the dough, it was kinda difficult to work with. It was very sticky and tacky and I had to use a lot of extra flour to dust my work surface and hand ever time I had to knead it. But it worked out in the end~

When everything was ready to be assembled, I looked at the Calphalon pan product instructions on the back and washed it in warm soapy water before use like it had instructed. For some reason though, the product didn't have a max heat described anywhere on it (I also looked at the website and couldn't find anything about it for the product). So, I just went with their provided pizza recipe that was stamped on the back of the product label cardboard and preheated my oven to 425F. I readied my pizza, assembled and all, on the pan and stuck it in my oven on the lowest rack.

To my surprise, when I checked up on it a few minutes later, I noticed that the pan had warped a little, the noticable kind of little, which made me a little irritated. The pan of course went back to normal when it cooled down a bit, but I did contact Calphalon about it.

Anyway, in the end, I must say that it turned out pretty good, considering I had to keep pulling at the edges and pinching in the thin parts in the center. The base was a good thickness and the crust was nice and crisp with a pleasant chewy texture on the inside. The pan's nonstick surface worked well too and the pizza slide right off. Cleaning the pan afterwards wasn't a bid problem either, since no dough got stuck in the holes (some people had complained about washing pizza pan's in general because of this). MY problem, however, was that after resting a while off the pizza pan, it started to get a bit soft on the bottom since I don't have an appropriate place to put the pizza on for cutting/resting.

All in all the pizza pan did it's job. I was quite happy with the result, minus the whole minor warping thing of course (which I had contacted Calphalon about and am in the middle of getting it resolved). I don't know it if was just a little defective, but Calphalon Consumer Relations had e-mailed me back saying that this is definitely not normal (obviously). I would probably say that this thing works pretty well in baking a pizza if you don't want to get a baking stone...and I would use it again; however, first things first, I'm going to see how this customer help is going to turn out.