Chocolate Mochi Cake with Vanilla Buttercream

This week I made chocolate cake... with a twist! Over half of the flour in it is Mochiko rice flour, and it baked up just like a slightly chewier medium-chocolatey cake. 

Some delicious vanilla Italian meringue buttercream, and boom! A fancy schmancy cake. Recipes at the bottom!

Here are a million pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

Chocolate Mochi Cake

1 1/4 cups mochiko
3/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1 cup bittersweet chocolate, either in chips or chopped up
12 oz evaporated milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 egg whites at room temp
pinch of cream of tartar
1 cup sugar

Preheat the oven to 350°. Oil and flour two 9" pans or, if you're doing a little tall cake like me, one 3" tall 6" diameter pan and one 9"x13" pan.
Mix dry ingredients (mochiko, flour, baking soda, and salt). Set aside.
Melt the butter and add in the chocolate, mixing until completely melted. Add evaporated milk and vanilla extract.
Mix the wet into the dry and set aside.
In a super clean bowl, start whipping the egg whites. Add the cream of tartar. When they're completely foamy, start to add the sugar, a little at a time until it is all incorporated. When the meringue keeps stiff peaks when the beater is lifted out of it, it is ready to be mixed into the batter. Fold a third of the meringue into the batter, and then do the same with the remaining meringue.
Pour the batter into the pans. For me, I filled the small pan halfway and put the rest in the large pan.
Bake for 35-40 minutes for a shallow cake and 45-50 for one in which the batter is deeper.

Vanilla Italian Meringue Buttercream
(makes enough for one 9" cake or a small and tall one like that pictured above)

1 1/2 cups butter (3 sticks) at room temp
3/4 cups sugar
1/4 cups water
3 egg whites at room temp
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
2 Tbsp vanilla

Beat the butter until light and fluffy, for around 10 minutes with a hand-held beater.
Place the sugar and water in a pan over medium heat and cook, stirring intermittently until the sugar is melted.
While the sugar boils, begin to whip the egg whites in a super clean bowl. Add in the cream of tartar, and whip until the whites are thick and fluffy. Keep the beater going while keeping an eye on the syrup temperature. Once it reaches 238° pour it slowly into the whites with the beater going (being careful not to pour the syrup over the beaters to avoid splatter) and continue to beat until the bowl is cool to the touch. Add the butter in a half cup at a time, add the vanilla and then beat a few more minutes to fluff the buttercream up. Done!


Bake Hard,
Azara

Experimental Cake with Bavarian Cream and Mango

Yesterday I went off-book and made up a weird cake recipe. I can't say I'm completely in love with it, but it was a worthwhile experiment and I'm going to keep playing with it to see what I can come up with. I started with what was essentially a kasutera batter, in which whole eggs and sugar are beaten together until quite thick and foamy folded together with flour, but I added some extra flour, a little baking powder and a little oil and milk. The oil of course completely deflated the eggs (which is why I added baking powder), but I wanted to see if beating them affected the quality of the finished product. I did end up with a loaf that rose beautifully and had a very lovely, very fine crumb; however, the cake was fairly coarse once it cooled completely, and quite dry.

What I'd like to do is bake another cake with the same ingredients but with no beating of the eggs to see whether beating them made a difference despite the oil-induced deflation. Then I'd like to bake one with more oil or maybe some butter in order to try for a soft, moist cake.

It did come up beautifully though, and baked through without threatening to over-brown! All too rare in a cake recipe.

To add some zazz I whipped up an eggless Bavarian cream and made some layers (Bavarian recipe below). The layers are so crazy uneven because I was in a terrific rush. I put this cake together in about ten frantic minutes, so think about the skill needed to achieve that before judging!
 

Also we didn't have any baking paper (I'm at my family's house in NYC) so I lined everything with foil... Looks kind of awesome, I have to say.

I also took some dried mango and boiled it in sugar syrup, let it soak for a while, drained it and studded one of the layers of cream with it. I used the syrup as a soak for the cake layers, but they still managed to remain remarkably dry. To my surprise, this coarse texture ended up working with the soft Bavarian cream, and my family likes the cake quite a bit! I'll still want to play around with the recipe before I post it though. 

 

Eggless Vanilla Bavarian Cream (adapted from festivalfoods.com)

1 Tbsp gelatin 
2 Tbsp very cold water
2 cups whipping cream
1/2 cups milk
1/3 cup sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Bloom the gelatin in the cold water for about five minutes.
Mix one cup of the cream with the milk, reserving the second cup of cream in the refrigerator. Put the cream and milk mixture over a medium heat and scald it, removing it from heat before it boils. Stir in the sugar and the salt, and stir in the bloomed gelatin until it dissolves completely. Chill it, adding in the vanilla once it's cooled but is not yet set (ten minutes or so). Once thickened, beat it until fluffy.
Separately, beat the reserved cup of cold cream until soft and pillowy. Fold it into the gelatin mixture, or beat it a bit if the gelatin is so set that it remains chunky after folding.
Pour the Bavarian into whatever mould is being used, lined with wax paper or wetted, or if using the Bavarian as layers of filling in a cake, build the layers immediately, using the pan in which the cake was baked in order to keep the Bavarian from squishing out as it sets. Here it helps to have very deep cake pans available, three or four inches works well.


So there we have it! I'm excited to be playing with vanilla cake and fruit combos. I am a committed chocolate person, but these flavors were great and I look forward to more fruit projects coming up, especially since I'll be hanging out in California for the next month and a half (starting the day after tomorrow!) and will be surrounded by gorgeous produce.

Next time I post it'll be from not-always-so-sunny Northern California! Maybe a fruit crisp or even a pie... yes...

Bake Hard!
Azara