Mocha Brownie Cake

 

Do you know the Shel Silverstein poem called "Jumping Rope"?  In case you've forgotten, or possibly don't know the poem, here you go:

Jumping Rope

This started out as a

jumping rope

You prob'ly think that

I'm a dope

But this started out as a

jumping rope

And now I fear there is

no hope

But this started out as a

jumping rope.



Throughout much of the creation of this week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe, Mocha Brownie Cake, this poem was running through my head.  You may wonder why.  Well, I'll tell you.  I had this great idea to make half of this week's recipe, in a cute little 6-inch size.  We just don't need a big, rich chocolate cake in our house right now, and we were about to leave for vacation (hip-hip-hooray...that is where I am right now!) so I THOUGHT I'd be SMART and halve the recipe.  What you see above is my cute little 6-inch Mocha Brownie Cake.  Ahhh.  BUT. 

Look again.  No, you do not have double vision.  Yes there are indeed TWO 6-inch cakes here.  What happened to making a smaller amount, you ask?  I'll tell you.  I made the unfortunate mistake of not actually writing down the ingredient amount changes in the cookbook when initially making this cake.  You wouldn't think that is necessary, all I was doing was cutting things in half.  But you see, that means that you have to actually concentrate and have your entire brain in the game the entire time to get EVERY ingredient right.  And I didn't.  I even thought I caught my mistake, and I did actually catch ONE mistake, but I had actually made TWO.  See, when chopping up all that chocolate, I made some errors.  The full recipe called for 4 1/2 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate and 2 1/2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate.  So, initially, I THOUGHT that I halved everything right, except for using an ENTIRE bar of unsweetened chocolate (as in 4 ounces).  I caught it right as I put the chocolate pieces into the double boiler, so I meticulously (and very scientifically, I might add) went through each piece of chocolate and separated it into a "semi-sweet" pile and an "unsweetened" pile, weighed the pile of unsweetened that I found, and added back in an amount that would make it such that the total amount would be 1.25 ounces.  I was all proud of myself and did a little dance at my quick save. 

Then I baked the cake.  And I realized that I had actually goofed TWICE.  First with the super-extra amount of unsweetened chocolate, and then with forgetting to HALVE the semi-sweet chocolate.  Ugh.  So my fully baked cake had twice the amount of chocolate than it should.  I told the clever girl, and she (sweet thing) said, "but we like chocolate, so that is a good thing, right?"  Well, yes, and I almost just kept the cake as it was and called it a day.  But.  But then I started thinking about what all that extra chocolate would do to the TEXTURE of the cake.  And would I really be evaluating the recipe truthfully if I totally screwed it up first?  So, I made another one.  I made another one AFTER writing IN INK all of the correct halved amounts and double checking everything I put in.  I decided to go ahead and finish both cakes so we could do a bit of a test and see just what the extra chocolate did to the cake.

The cake on the LEFT is the correct recipe.  The cake on the RIGHT is the extra-chocolatey recipe.  To be honest, both are very good.  I mean, slather anything in chocolate ganache and it is bound to be good, right?  Here is what I determined.  You know how there tends to be an argument about brownies, as to whether they should be "cakey" or "fudgey"?  Well, the correct version of this cake recipe is for a "cakey" cake.  The incorrect version makes a more "fudgey" cake.  It is more dense and a bit more dry, but not too much.  Honestly, they are both good, but the correct one has the right FEEL.  There are two components to eating cake - the taste and the mouth feel.  The incorrect one was deliciously chocolately, but not 100% right for the mouth feel. 

So here is my next random thought about this cake.  Scroll up to the top photo again for a second and then come back.  If there was a piece of crumpled up foil next to the cake, wouldn't it look like a giant ding-dong?  It has been ages since I have eaten one of those things, but do you know what I  mean?  They literally look exactly like this cake, all shiny on the outside and sort of shaped like a large hockey-puck.  Here is the honest truth--  When I was in high school, I ate (don't judge me) a DING DONG, some CHEESE POPCORN, and an ORANGE DRINK pretty much every day for lunch.  Seriously.  And I was a skinny twig of a kid.  Other kids teased me because I was skinny.  I was a senior in high school before I hit the 100lb mark (I am 5'7" by the way) and I recall being horrified at having a 3-DIGIT-NUMBER weight.  Ahh, the metabolism of youth.  It totally grosses me out now that I ate that nastiness.  Instead of being coated in delicious ganache, a ding dong is coated in chocolate flavored wax and then filled with some sort of sweet white marshmallow-y filling.  They have a shelf life of forever.  And what is it about cheese popcorn that makes it that bizarre orange color?  There is nothing natural about that.  And orange "drink"?  What the heck is that?  Let's not even go there.  There was nothing remotely healthy or natural about that lunch.  Ugh.  Amazingly, I survived that stage of downright atrocious eating with all of my teeth intact and a much MUCH improved view of good cuisine.

Thank you for traveling with me on my total digression down memory lane.  See how hard it is for me to concentrate on only one thing?  I blame parenthood for this. 

Oh, here are some random notes about this cake:

• I halved the eggs (recipe called for 5) by using 2 whole eggs and then weighing one lightly beaten egg (2 oz.) and using half of it.
• I was originally concerned about using semi-sweet chocolate (I am a bittersweet chocolate kind of girl) but the mixture of semi-sweet and unsweetened works fine.  Plus I ended up using bittersweet chocolate in the ganache since I used up my semi-sweet chocolate in my screw-ups.
• I did not frost the cake in a springform pan.  I did it on the plate, thus it is not perfect but is fine with me.
• I barely taste the coffee in the ganache.  Maybe mine wasn't strong enough.  I am not a coffee drinker so I may not have done it right.  Not much mocha flavor...
• I think this cake needs to be served with something to cut the sugar. Maybe some raspberries or something.

A Good Plan

This started out as a

pretty good plan

Too many mistakes

and I was in a jam

But this started out as a

pretty good plan

It took me back to my youth

of which I wasn't a fan

But this started out as a

pretty good plan.

For more insight as to what the other bakers thought of this recipe, see the TWD blog and click on "LYL:  Mocha Brownie Cake".  You can find the recipe for the Mocha Brownie cake on pages 282-283 of Baking with Julia or by clicking here.