My Devious Plan to get a New Oven

Well. It's been a while, I see. Whoops. So. How to sum up the past few months before we move onto the important thing, namely cake and new ovens? The best way to describe my summer is that involved a lot of pizza and a lot of roller derby, as I worked in two different pizza joints and worked hard on my skating. Big Easy Rollergirls taught me everything I know about skating and made my last year in New Orleans amazing! I spent a lot time with my friends, especially my wolf pack, and became a regular at Twelve Mile Limit, the best snobby cocktail bar I've come across. But, come August, it was time to move again.

I moved to Boston to start my non-profit management MBA at the Heller School. It's a huge change in identity, and so far it's great! My roommate also lived in New Orleans, and her sister is a friend of mine (before we settled on that, I interviewed some truly weird potential roommates. Maybe I'll tell you about it someday). Going back to school does leave less room for creative pursuits, but I've managed somehow. Soon I'll tell you about the beer brewing in recon room of my apartment, but for now, I'll restrict my comments to the oven situation.

The apartment is lovely, but the kitchen is best described as...dated. The oven and fridge are avocado green, the floor and backsplash tiles are brown. It's 70s-tastic. The oven never worked very well, as the door would only open with a fight, and fell off every so often. The fridge is the antithesis of energy efficient. So really, using the kitchen could be an exercise in slapstick comedy. It all came to a head Thursday night. The Gentleman in Question has a nice round birthday in a few days, and I had promised him cake. After some effort, I had the batter in the pans ready to go, so I opened the oven door. Big mistake. The door came flying off, crazy hot, and crashed to the floor. I couldn't get it back on. The landlord came over, and we discovered the hinges were warped. His wife kindly baked the cake for me, and our oven door is leaning against the door to the porch. As of Thursday night, there was talk of getting a new oven. My roommate is quite pleased with that turn of events, and the Gentleman is scheming a way to get me a new refrigerator.

The cake was totally worth it. The Gentleman requested some combination of chocolate and raspberry, and being an overachiever, I decided to do a checkerboard with those flavors. To get the checkerboard effect, you need a plastic insert. It comes in a kit. There are many options, so investigate. The pans in the kit I linked to are pretty nice. Once you have that essential piece of equipment, the rest is fairly simple. Finding recipes can be tricky, because the two cake flavors need to have similar textures, and bake at the same temperature for the same amount of time. Raspberry cake was an additional challenge. Every recipe involved jello. Which is creepy. Until Smitten Kitchen saved the day, with her adapted Pink Lady Cake recipe. I changed it further, cutting it in half and subbing in raspberries. For the chocolate, I went with this recipe from Joy of Baking, also cut in half. The raspberry flavor shines through, and the chocolate is rich without being too sweet. My cake came out extra dense and not as checkerboardy because of the baking drama, but yours will turn out light and delightful. You'll get three bowls dirty making these cakes, so the mess isn't too bad.

Raspberry Cake Ingredients:

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature3/4 cups pureed raspberries (frozen ones work best, defrosted of course)

2 1/4 cups cake flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 teaspoon salt
4 egg whites
1/3 cup milk
1 to 2 drops red food dye

Chocolate Cake Ingredients:

2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 cup boiling water

1 1/4 cups cake flour

1 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup granulated white sugar

1 large egg

1 egg yolk

1 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 cup milk

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350.

For the chocolate cake, mix the chocolate and cocoa together in a bowl. Pour the boiling water over the chocolate and stir until smooth. Cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy, then add the chocolate mixture. Beat in the egg and egg yolk (reserve the egg white for the raspberry cake). Add the dry ingredients in batches, alternating with some of the milk and vanilla. Beat the batter until it's fluffy, then set aside.

For the raspberry cake, cream together the butter and sugar until it's smooth and fluffy. Beat in the raspberry puree. Start adding the dry ingredients slowly, beating well after each addition. Once they're incorporated, mix together the dye, milk and egg whites in a measuring cup, then pour it into the batter, beating at medium speed for a few minutes, until it looks nice and fluffy.

Spray 2 9-inch cake pans with a cooking spray that contains flour. Insert the plastic ring contraption from the checkerboard kit. Starting with the chocolate batter, ladle some of the batter into the outer ring. Rotate the pan and ladle more chocolate batter in, then use a spoon or a spatula to smooth it out. Repeat until the ring is 3/4 to the top. Now ladle some of the chocolate batter into the center ring, until it also reaches 3/4 to the top. Ladle some of the raspberry batter into the middle ring, rotating and smoothing as you go, until it's equal to the other two rings. Remove the plastic ring insert and rinse it. Repeat with the next pan, following a raspberry, chocolate, raspberry pattern. 

Bake at 350 for 35 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean from the centers. Cool for 15 minutes in the pan, then remove and cool completely. At this point, you can wrap the layers in plastic wrap and freeze them. I recommend that you do if you want your cake to look fancy.

Chocolate Frosting Ingredients:

4 oz. unsweetened chocolate, melted

1 stick butter

1 lb powdered sugar

1-3 tablespoons raspberry puree or jam

milk

Directions:

Cream together butter, chocolate, puree/jam, and sugar. Add milk to get a smooth consistency. There's no excuse not to make your own frosting, it's super easy.

To frost your cake, first you should level the layers. This means taking a serrated knife and cutting the dome off across the top. This is much easier to do if the layers are frozen. Once the domes are off, and you've eaten the scraps, you can frost the cake. The truly OCD can also trim the sides, but there is a limit to my patience. Put a medium layer of frosting on the top of your bottom cake layer, then put the top layer on, cut side down. Dab some frosting on top of the cake, and use a knife or a spatula to spread it around the top and down the sides. You want this layer to be super thin, as it's the crumb coat that seals in your recalcitrant cake bits. Once this layer is on, pop the whole thing in the fridge for a while (30 minutes-ish), then pull it out and frost it for serious. What you do from here is up to you. We dusted on some shaved Icelandic chocolate and dotted it with some fresh raspberries.