Happy Birthday!

My Heathen: "Uh, Did you just pet your Kitchen Aid mixer?" Me: "Yes. Yes, I did."

I love my mixer. It allows me to be a lazy baker. And I've been a baking fiend the past two weeks. Like, 5 loaves of bread, three cakes, and two frostings fiend. Today is a dear friend of mine's birthday. She's a beautiful foodie who was going to make her own birthday cake, simply because she wanted Red Velvet from scratch, the right way (see why I loves her? We're a lot alike). After coating her kitchen in oozy blood covered batter and posting her lovely results on Facebook, I decided that this would not do. Not to show her up, I decided to make her a Black Velvet cake.

Now most every kid who grew up in the South has had red velvet cake. At it's best, it's a soft, oh-so-slightly chocolatey cake, so moist you can squish it with your fork, and leave a fun red stain on your plate. It's really the only cake that reapplies your lipcolor for you. But it's darker, less well known, far more evil (*grin*) kin is Black Velvet. First, as disturbing as a blood red cake can be, this one is BLACK. It's darkly delicious--deeply, gloriously, sensually chocolate. And as moist as it's ruddy cousin. It's chocolate cake, and then some. And my dear friend has never had it. Well, I'm fixin' that.

Authentic Black Velvet cake usually uses a super-alkaline cocoa powder, like black onyx. It's not the easiest to find, so many will have to turn to the interwebs--the best purveyor I've found is King Arthur http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/black-cocoa-16-oz . It doesn't have enough unctuousness for most baked goods, so it's usually mixed 1:1 with a traditional (natural or dutch) cocoa to amp the flavor and fat. What black onyx lacks in fat levels (read: moisture), it makes up with by being BLACK. Hehehehe. I feel my inner mad culinary genius stirring.

So today's adventure in baking will feature Black Velvet cake using black cocoa powder and Scharffen Berger's 100% cacao unsweetened natural cocoa powder. I picked mine up at my beloved local gourmet grocery, but you can also get it here:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004N5J568/ref=asc_df_B004N5J5681685289?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=asn&creative=395093&creativeASIN=B004N5J568. 

Black Velvet cake

 

I like baking with a scale. For those of you who still only use cups and spoons, the measurement on the left is for you. The ones on the right and middle are for use by us weighing types.

Preheat your oven to 350 or so, and bloom your cocoa:

1 cup/8 oz (240 grams) boiling water

1/2 cup/ 1 oz (60 grams) black (onyx) cocoa powder

½ cup/ 1 oz natural cocoa powder (I used Scharffen Berger’s Unsweetened)

Add:

1 rounded TBS espresso powder

Mix until smooth and shiny. Set aside to cool. Put away the cocoas and instant espresso.  

It should be thick enough that the spoon stands.

Stick your finger on the side, scoop some on, and taste test it with a pinch of sugar. Mmmm, right? Now, go clean the batter beater you forgot to clean last night when you made the Neufchatel cheese frosting (Did I forget to mention Neufchatel frosting?). Prep your pan(s) with some grease and a dusting of the cheaper cocoa. Let the whiny dog out. And back in. 

 

Said whiny dog, AKA my Choco-beast. 

Then, in your mixing bowl sift:
 

2 cups cake flour

2 cups plus ¾ oz.(23 grams) sugar

1/8 oz (4 grams) baking powder

¼ oz (9 grams) baking soda

1/8 oz (3-4 grams) kosher salt (do not forget the salt! It makes the chocolate all the more chocolate-y)

Add

2 large eggs

1 cup/8 1/8 oz (230 grams) non-fat buttermilk

1/2 cup / 2 ¾ oz (80 grams) vegetable oil (your choice, I used regular olive oil)

And chocolate mess you just made.

Mix very well, batter should be as thin as the bloomed chocolate was thick (a soupy mess). 

  

At this point, if you’re a real stickler for the black color, you can add food coloring to really sell it. Or not. Your choice. Pour into prepared cake pan and bake 35-40 minutes (depending on shape and color of your pan)

 

Hello my beautiful dark princess... 

or when a toothpick poked inconspicuously in the middle comes out clean. 

Meanwhile, clean the kitchen of the baking shrapnel and pre-treat the white T shirt you accidentally wore while making this cake. And make this:

Neufchatel cheese frosting

As promised this cake is topped with Neufchatel cheese frosting. Neufchatel   (http://www.forvo.com/word/neufch%C3%A2tel/#fr)  is what cream cheese wishes to be. It’s from Normandy (where it’s sometimes known as Coeur de Bray), and it’s made from milk, not cream.  It’s softer, moister, less fatty, and a touch tangy-er than American cream cheese. While I wouldn’t use it for a NY style cheese cake, I love it in frosting. It’s slightly savory bite is a beautiful counterpoint to the chocolate-y decadence that it cradles.

1 8 oz package Neufchatel*

1 stick unsalted butter

4 cups powder sugar

1 tsp Madagascar vanilla (I like Neilsen-Massey)

Blend until smooth and satiny. Can be made ahead of time and covered in plastic wrap in fridge until use. 

*I keep meaning to try homemade Labneh instead of this, sometime I’ll experiment and report back.

Let your cake cool for 10 minutes in the pan before turning out onto a cooling rack. Let cool at least 2 hours before frosting it at all.