Fluffy Yellow Layer Cake

When I asked my husband what he wanted for dessert last night, he said that he had been craving yellow cake with chocolate frosting. It was the perfect time to try out a new Cook's Illustrated recipe. This cake is supposed to please boxed cake mix lovers who feel that most made from scratch butter cakes are too heavy or dense. Here's how CI explained it:

Box mixes are famous for engineering cake with ultralight texture. We set out to make an even fluffier cake—without chemicals and additives...Adapting a chiffon technique (using a large quantity of whipped egg whites to get a high volume and light texture) to combine the ingredients from our butter cake recipe worked beautifully, creating a light, porous cake that was hefty enough to hold the frosting’s weight. But the cake lacked moistness and some tenderness. Using a combination of fats (10 tablespoons of butter plus 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil) kept the butter flavor intact while improving the moistness of the cake.

I would like to point out that for about a year, I had been touting a change I made to the CI white layer cake recipe that I felt made a substantial improvement. I substituted several tablespoons of the butter in that recipe with vegetable oil and found it greatly improved the texture of the cake, especially after refrigeration. The fact that this recipe also uses a combination of fats is probably just be a coincidence, but I like to flatter myself with the belief that one of CI's test cooks read my notes and borrowed the idea.

While I remain in fantasy land, I want to add that I think my cake turned out prettier than CI's. At left is the photo from Cook's Illustrated website, and mine is on the right. I thought that the cake was pretty darn good and I will make it again, even though I sure dirtied a lot of bowls making it. It might be as fluffy as a boxed cake mix, but it's definitely not as easy. But since I can't stand the chemical aftertaste of a boxed mix, I think it is worth the effort.

The chocolate frosting recipe that accompanies the cake is quick, easy and delicious. Although the recipe says milk chocolate works best for this cake, I used a combination of dark and milk chocolate. It uses quite a few ingredients, including melted chocolate, cocoa powder, butter, light corn syrup, powdered sugar and vanilla. (My go-to chocolate frosting only uses sour cream, chocolate and vanilla - technically it's a ganache.) This frosting is ready in a flash and it spread very easily. I didn't even need to use a crumb coat on the sides of the cake. (A crumb coat is generally used to stick down the loose crumbs that want to pull up when you ice a cake. It's a very thin coat that is then followed by a thicker coat of icing. Think of it as cake primer, followed by a topcoat.)

I used a cake comb to make a pattern in the icing but my cake wasn't as level as I thought it was. The lines needed to be touched up and didn't turn out as smoothly as I would have liked. However, I've decided that since I don't bake cakes often enough to have the icing turn out flawlessly, I won't berate myself for messing up. It has made cake decorating a much more pleasant pastime. My cakes aren't showpieces, but they're sure attractive enough to eat!

A few swirls at the top edge and some dots at the bottom and I called it an evening. My husband liked the cake scraps that he ate after I trimmed it, and I enjoyed the piece I had for breakfast (!) this morning. Looks like a light lunch is in order. The cake lived up to its billing, very light and fluffy. The crumb was pretty good - not too coarse (the problem I have with boxed mixes), but not quite as tight as a traditional cake. The frosting complemented the cake very well. This one's a keeper.

Comments

[Charcuterista]

The cake looks beautiful and, being a dark chocolate freak, I would completely pick yours over the CI picture...

[Lindsay McSweeney]

Yvonne and I are really impressed with your cake (Yes, we think your cake is prettier than ours, too! But we don't want to intimidate our readers). We're both thrilled you liked it -- Yvonne, especially, since she made over 100 cakes before she settled on the recipe.

I enjoy your blog,

Lindsay