Yellow Cake with Dark Chocolate Buttercream Frosting: Round 1

As previously mentioned, the perfect frosting has already been discovered, so unless otherwise mentioned it's safe to assume that the base of the frosting will the the Italian Meringue Butter Cream from Cake Love with experimentations to the flavorings.

That being said, this most recent adventure involved yellow cake and dark chocolate frosting. Future posts will have better photo depictions, but since I didn't get the idea for the blog until after I had baked and given away these bad boys, this one picture will have to suffice!

Analysis of the Cake
The cake recipe was the "Yellow Buttermilk Cupcakes" recipe from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes. Now, I already have kind of a beef with this cookbook (mainly that it touts 175 recipes for cupcakes when half of them are really just muffins and also that it appears to focus on the flashy instead of the quality) but the recipe seemed pretty simple and involved buttermilk, something I've found to be an indicator of a good cake recipe. But, overall I felt that the cake was rather bland and needed more of a robust "yellow cake" hurrah and was easily overpowered by the fantastic frosting.

The Yays

• Baked nicely, a little golden brown on the edges just like you'd want
• Held it's shape well when unwrapped, not too crumbly (there's nothing worse than either of those things)
• The unbaked batter was fantastic
• Good amount of sweetness

The Nays

• A little bit on the drier side. This recipe used cake flour and all-purpose flour which I'm highly skeptical of because some of the best cakes I've baked were from recipes that used all-purpose flour. I think somehow the gluten content of the conflicting flours was the culprit
• Underwhelming taste, could have had more oomph

Overall Impression: Meh
I just have a gut feeling a better recipe exists out there. It's not horrible, but it definitely does not qualify for "ohmuhlord" status

Analysis of the Frosting
For the frosting I took the chocolate additions from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes recipe for Dark Chocolate frosting and added them to the Italian Meringue base. Using a combination of cocoa powder in boiling water and melted semi-sweet chocolate chips the result was fantastical. The frosting retained all of the wonderful things about the Italian Meringue but had a nice rich dark chocolate finish.

Overall Impression: Ohmuhlord
This one is a definite winner and will be recorded in my personal cookbook I am building.

In summary, there still exists a quest for a better yellow cake and my suspicions of Martha Stewart's focus on the flash rather than a good tasting product were partially confirmed. 

Pre-Established Perfection

Awhile back, a major element of this journey was established: the perfect frosting. And holy cow is it good.

The Italian Meringue Butter Cream found in Cake Love is pure perfection and let me break down why.

Consistency
When properly created, this frosting is stiff enough to hold its shape when piped onto either a cupcake or cake, yet buttery enough to capture that perfect "melt in your mouth" deliciousness that a good butter cream should.
Frostability
This recipe for frosting is super easy to pipe. Not so thick that you are squeezing the living daylights out of your piper of choice (classic bag or newfangled mechanical) and not so thin that it just kind of goops out. 
Buildability
Suggestions are given in the cookbook for ways to alter flavor and taste of the frosting and they are definitely a good start. However, what is awesome about the base of the frosting recipe is that it gives you a solid foundation to expand some creative thinking and come up with your own experimentation.
Taste
I have never made a frosting recipe with a base of powdered sugar and enjoyed it. Because of the too sweet taste of powdered sugar frosting, I long maintained that canned frosting was good enough. But then....I made this one and realized that this actually beats out canned frosting. By quite a bit of yardage. Not too sweet, right amount of buttery love this frosting tastes a-mazing.


It took me a couple of times to really understand the zen of creating this frosting as it can be a little tricky perfecting the meringue portion of the recipe. Where I really struggled the first couple of times was beating the four sticks of butter in enough so that there weren't any surprise tablespoon chunks of butter spread on my cake.

So, since it has been established that this is indeed the best frosting base the journey of frosting in this blog will be the new creation of different flavors to go along with the frosting base and honing in on the perfect concoction to get each desired flavor.
 

A Treat Manifesto: Taking Treat from "meh" to "Ohmuhlord"

If there is one thing that I can't stand about dessert these days, it's that everyone focuses on making things gimmicky (800 flavors of mediocre ice cream!) and flashy (a dry cupcake filled with a different flavor than the frosting!) rather than perfecting the basics and delivering a high quality treat. Portland is extremely guilty of this crime. This results in desserts that are impressive at first, but at the core don't even taste very good. After too many experiences where I left describing the treatery as "hit or miss" I have made it my mission to find the perfect recipes for treats.

I've been baking for years and years but mostly focusing on perfecting the technique of baking. Now that my  skills have been honed, it's time to focus on finding on the creme de la creme of recipes to produce. This blog is a chronicling of my adventure. It begins with building a repertoire of perfect cupcakes/cake and frosting. I'll start with the basics (chocolate cake, yellow cake, etc) and work my way towards the more complex/fancy.

Treat Beliefs:
-High quality, fresh ingredients make for a better final product
-Understanding the science of baking is critical for success
-Establishing a good quality base of the basics before moving outwards to the fancy/gimicky/flashy
-Don't you dare fill a cupcake with anything other than the frosting on top. This is a one-way ticket towards taste overload. Seriously it's not that big of a tasting space so why complicate it with three competing flavors?
-Find lot's of people to give your treats away to after baked. Your pancreas will thank you.

Buckle up and enjoy the ride!