Experiment #5: Black and White Cookie Cake

A few months ago my husband, Chris, started coming home from work with some yummy baked goods created by the girlfriend of one of his co-workers. We discovered that she had a blog called takeamegabite.com. The two of us would sit together at night reading her posts while trying not to drool on the keyboard. Take a Megabite is one of the reasons I started my own blog. Chris and I were both anxious to try Megabite's recipes on our own....this is the first of probably many we will "borrow" from her blog.

Our friend, Barry, wanted to throw a surprise 30th birthday party for his fiance, Mindy. Of course I saw this as another opportunity to make my way into the kitchen so I offered to bake a cake. I thought I would make a German chocolate cake but Barry informed me that Mindy would probably prefer a white cake so I went in search of a recipe for one. One of the first places I looked was http://takeamegabite.com/. There I found this recipe:

Buttermilk Cake

2 and 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

2 cups sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

4 large eggs

1 cup buttermilk

Line 2 (9 inch) cake pans with buttered parchment paper. Position rack in the middle of oven and preheat to 350 degrees.

Stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl, mixing well.

Place the butter and sugar in a large bowl and beat on medium speed for about 5 minutes, or until very soft and light. Beat in the vanilla, then beat in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Reduce the speed to low and beat in one third of the flour mixture, then half the buttermilk, stopping and scraping down the bowl and beater after each addition. Beat in another third of the flour, then the remaining buttermilk, stopping and scraping again. Finally, beat in the remaining flour mixture.

Scrape the bowl well with a large rubber spatula. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and smooth the tops.

Bake the layers for about 30 to 35 minutes, until they are well risen and firm and a toothpick inserted in the centre emerges clean. Cool the layers in the pans for 5 minutes, then unmold onto racks to finish cooling.

(Recipe from Food Mahem, original source Nick Malgieri's Perfect Cakes)

Black and White Cookie Icing

3 cups confectioners sugar

2 tbsp light corn syrup

2-3 tsp fresh lemon juice

1/2 tsp vanilla

2-4 tbsp water

1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

Make icing while cake chills.

Stir together confectioners sugar, corn syrup, lemon juice, vanilla, and 1 tablespoon water in a small bowl until smooth. Transfer half of the icing to another bowl and stir in cocoa, adding more water 1/2 teaspoon at a time to thin to same consistency as white icing.

Ice the bottom layer half white and half black and place the top layer on top.

Frost the opposite sides of the top layer white and black.

(Recipe adapted from Epicurious)

When you line a cake pan with parchment paper, only line the BOTTOM of the cake pan. I learned this the hard way. I lined the whole cake pan and the above photo is the outcome. It looks like a few chunks were taken out of the sides of the cakes! Oh well, now I know!

Mmmm, drippy icing! Like it says on takeamegabite, "...as far as frostings and icings are concerned, there is never a for sure recipe. I'm always adding this and that to get it to the desired consistency. Feel free to add more powdered sugar and then more water until consistency is all you are dreaming of." I may have added a little more water then necessary because I wanted to make sure the icing was going to achieve this great dripping effect!

The finished product!

I bought some of these icing flowers at the Bulk Barn and decided to place them down the centre of this cake in order to disguise the fact that the line was not so straight.

By the way, I was so worried about serving my cake to a bunch of people who weren't family that I almost didn't bring it to the party. I called my mom and asked her to help me bake another cake and by the time I got to her house she had a carrot cake in the oven for me...now that's a great mom!! I ended up bringing both cakes to the party and both were a hit!