Chocolate Cake

When we were dating Zac claimed he preferred pie over cake for his birthday. Last year, however, when I told him I was making him pie he confessed that what he really wanted was chocolate cake and  so I made him one and the result was delicious. This year I made Ron Ben Israel's chocolate cake. He is suppose to be the king of cake and so I had very, very, very high expectations for his recipe. To his credit, the cake did not disappoint! He is in fact, a sweet genius! The cake is moist, decadent, and intensely chocolaty (I have not tasted a complete slice but have been nibbling here and there for some quality control). This batter was also the runniest batter I have ever worked with but just have faith it is suppose to be very, very soupy!

I think Zac will be very happy with the turn out of the cake and I am super excited for him to have it on Monday. He is turning 25 years old! That is a quarter of a century! 

Ingredients

Runny batter

cooling

6 layers of cake, frosted with chocolate mousse in between each layer

made pretty with big milk chocolate curls

My Adjustments

*I got his recipe from food network's website. He does not add the two cups of water the recipe calls for in the directions in the ingredients list, and thankfully I did not skip over reading the directions like I usually do and was able to catch it. 

*I also used cake flour instead of regular all purpose flour. Make sure to use 1cup+1T of cake flour for every cup of all purpose flour you are replacing. Cake flour is much finer and so need a little more of it to get the right proportion of dry to wet ingredients.

*I also used a combination of light brown and castor sugar (2 cups of each). 

*This recipe calls for 2 cups coffee that can be replaced with 2 cups of very strong postum (you can do any barely/wheat drink, or even just hot water --just avoid hot chocolate or anything of that nature because it will only make the cake sweeter).

*I filled the layers with Nigella's chocolate mousse. 

*I also did not use his ganache recipe but instead used Ree Drummond's. 

The result? Chocolate cake goodness! 

 tall and beautiful!