“Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable.”
― Roald Dahl, Matilda
This week’s theme was Just Desserts, a meal that is a deserved punishment or perhaps, revenge.
In real life, food should never be so sinister, but in children’s books, all bets are off. In the Narnia books, Edmund’s greed for Turkish Delight makes him betray his siblings to The White Witch. In Harry Potter, Dudley Dursley’s gluttony for candy and sweets ultimately results in a piggy tail, and later a swollen tongue. Hansel and Gretel eat the witch’s gingerbread house and nearly end up dinner themselves.
But Bruce Bogtrotter’s chocolate cake from Matilda is such a classic “just dessert,” — one that starts as punishment but ends in a victory — that I couldn’t pass up a chance to make it.
The book
As a bookworm myself, I’ve always loved Matilda. She’s a genius little girl, who reads everything she can get her hands on, does large sums in her head and can move objects with her mind. Despite her talents, she’s tormented by her doltish parents and her evil school principal, Agatha Trunchbull. But rather than playing the victim, Matilda stands up for herself and her classmates and uses her smarts and powers to get revenge on her bullies.
I listened to the audiobook version recently and it’s as delightful and funny as the first time I read Matilda in elementary school. Kate Winslet’s narration is the best — she does all the voices and gets Matilda’s character just right. It was such a comfort to listen to.
The food
When Bruce, a school mate of Matilda’s, is caught stealing chocolate cake, the Trunchbull decides to give him his “just desserts,” by making his eat a whole cake as punishment. But Bruce is victorious, finishing the cake while the school cheers, and in the end, the awful Trunchbull gets her just desserts instead.
For this week, I wanted a chocolate cake delicious and rich, with the perfect amount of sweetness — the kind of cake that keeps you coming back for more.
This was gonna be a challenge, because cake is not usually my thing. I make bread all the time, I love a good pie at Thanksgiving and Christmas cookies are my favorite holiday tradition. But I’ve never made homemade layer cake, frosting and all, from scratch.
After some research, I decided to go big and settled on Claire Saffitz’s Chocolate Layer Cake, a three-tiered dark chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. I picked this cake because, while it was more work than some other recipes, the reviews raved about how moist the cake was, and many said the frosting — a variation on German buttercream — was rich but not cloyingly sweet.
The recipe is on the NY Times Cooking site and there’s also a YouTube video of Claire making the cake.
The cake begins with mixing the dry ingredients, blooming the cocoa powder in hot coffee, and whisking the eggs until smooth. Then you combine all these elements together in a stand mixer, until the mixture is the consistency of pancake batter. Divide the batter between three greased and lined eight-inch cake pans and bake until done, about 25 to 30 minutes.
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The frosting takes a little more time and elbow grease. The first step is making a homemade chocolate pudding, by whisking together egg yolks, flour, cocoa powder, salt and sugar in a bowl until the mixture is thick but smooth. Whisking the thick mixture is quite an arm workout, so thank goodness for yoga and trapeze to keep me strong.
Once the mixture is smooth, whisk in some of the warm milk and sugar to temper the eggs, then pour everything back into the saucepan and cook it on medium-low heat, whisking constantly until it thickens, and you have chocolate pudding.
Next, pour the warm pudding over chopped dark chocolate in the bowl of a stand mixer and let it sit until the chocolate melts. Then, whip the pudding and melted chocolate together until the mixture is smooth and the bowl has cooled down — this also takes a while, especially since my kitchen gets very warm in the middle of summer. I put ice packs around the bowl at the end to make sure it was cool enough before I added the butter.
While the mixer is running, add the butter in chunks, letting each bit incorporate into the frosting until you add the next. As you add butter, the frosting will lighten. After you’ve added all the butter, add vanilla and whip the frosting one last time.
To assemble the cake, make sure all the layers are cool before you frost them. You can level them if they are domed or uneven, but I found I didn’t have to. Sandwich frosting between each layer and do a crumb coat — this is where watching Claire’s technique in her video came in handy for me, since I don’t have a ton of experience frosting cakes. After the crumb coat, I put the cake in the fridge for about 30 minutes to help firm it up before adding the final layer of frosting. My bottom edges of the cake weren’t very neat, so I also added a row of chocolate chips around the bottom to hide my mistakes.
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The verdict? As a person who is not a fan of super-sweet desserts, I loved this cake. I took it to a Fourth of July cookout and most of my family loved it too, including my nephew, who ate it with his hands, just like Bruce.
The cake itself is moist, with a good amount of chocolate flavor, but for me, it’s the frosting that really sells it. If you’re not a fan of sickly sweet traditional American buttercream, you’ll like this dark chocolate German buttercream. It’s rich and full of chocolate flavor, but not overly sweet—the perfect complement to this cake.
As a bonus, this layer cake keeps well in the fridge for a few days and it also freezes well, frosting and all. Cut the cake into slices and let the frosting set up in fridge before wrapping each slice in a layer of parchment and then a layer of aluminum foil. Store your slices in a freezer bag, and have cake whenever you want, no Trunchbull to stop you.
Next week: Emulsification