Hello. I am Jonathan. I am usually not a baker - at all! I love to get in the kitchen and cook, but usually that is freestyling, and I'm pretty sure freestyling a cake would basically result in either a puddle of goo or a large hockey puck. But for Hannah's birthday, I thought it wouldn't really be fair to make her bake her own cake, so I tried to find a recipe and whip something up.
I know Hannah likes chocolate, so I wanted to make a chocolate cake. Not only that, I wanted to make a cake that has actual real chocolate in the mixture. You'd think the internet would be full of recipes like this, but if you thought that (like I did), you would be wrong. Almost all the chocolate cake recipes I found use cocoa powder to chocolatify their batter, so I had to keep searching. I knew I wanted to use Dairy Milk bars, because Hannah likes it, and because we had a bunch of it left over sitting in a baggie on the counter. Even the Cadbury website didn't have a recipe I could use. Finally I found one - on the Hershey chocolate website and decided to use it, but substitute one brand for the other!
Ingredients (Serves 12-16):
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
4 eggs
6 (1.55 oz each) Hershey's Milk Chocolate, melted (I used Dairy Milk here instead)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
Dash salt
1 cup buttermilk or sour milk (I did the add-a-teaspoon-of-vinegar trick because I forgot to buy buttermilk)
1/2 cup Hershey's Syrup (I used Nesquik, because that's what we had)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Directions:
1. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour 10-inch tube pan or 12-cup fluted tube pan. (Make sure you get every inch of the pan greased and floured. Missing a spot is bad, as we will see later.)
2. Beat butter in large bowl until creamy. Gradually add granulated sugar, beating on medium speed of mixer until well blended. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add melted chocolate; beat until blended.
3. Stir together flour, baking soda, and salt. Add to chocolate mixture alternately with buttermilk, beating until blended. Add syrup and vanilla, beat until blended. Pour batter into prepared pan.
4. Bake 1 hour and 15 minutes (mine was in for an hour and a half, when I thought it was done, but in the end it was still maybe just under being well done), or until wooden pick inserted in the centre of cake comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes, remove from pan to wire rack. Cool completely. Sift powdered sugar over top (OR make a glaze, like I did!)
So yes. That is what I did, with the few changes I made annotated in the recipe. As I mentioned at the end, I wanted to make some kind of glaze/icing for the cake. It was already a Bundt cake - not a traditional birthday cake - and I wanted to make it a bit more celebratory. One of Hannah's favourite things to do with chocolate is to dip it in her tea. Her best thing is getting a large chocolate Easter egg, breaking it into pieces, an using them to scoop up the tea, letting it melt a bit, and then drinking it. So what better icing for her chocolate flavoured cake than a tea flavoured glaze!
Again, it was off to google I went. After looking through a number of different recipes, I ended up finding one for Chocolate Chip Shortbread with Earl Grey Tea Glaze at Good Cooks. I used this as my jumping off point, but I wanted to make it a 'normal' tea glaze, using Tetley tea bags. Here is the recipe.
Ingredients:
1/4 cup boiling water
3 bags of tea
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon butter, softened
Directions:
1. Pour boiling water over tea bags, allow to steep 3-5 minutes. Remove tea bags.
2. In a small bowl, stir together powdered sugar and butter. Gradually stir in enough tea to make glaze thin enough to drizzle. (DON'T MAKE IT THIN! I guess this is meant for drizzling over cupcakes, but in this case I wanted it to be poured over and to ooze down the sides of the cake. I was actually afraid I was leaving it too thick, but it did dribble down nicely. But you want it quite thick - kind of like molasses.)
And that's all she wrote... or in my case, 'he wrote'. Baked the cake, had the heart-stopping experience of trying to turn it out of the pan, had a little bit stick to the pan (grease and flour properly please!), and had a nice gooey glaze drip down the sides. I think the cake is delicious - I think Hannah does too - and we shared a bit with my two grandmothers who both said it was moist and good. They kind of didn't believe I had baked it :( But here's the proof, real life photos! ... Happy Birthday Hannah!
Right - gotta go - time to eat some cake!
~ ~ ~ So there it is! My first featured guest on the blog... something I'd like to start doing more in this coming year (...yeh, I run on school years still). Hope you liked it! It really was a good cake, and he's done a good job right?! #BestHusband ♥
Nicely done! Excellent guess contribution! The cake looks amazing!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much!! It was a great cake, and I was happy to have him write such a good post :) Thanks for stopping by!
DeleteHappy happy birthday! Great job on the cake, Hannah's husband! :)
ReplyDeleteYEY thank you so much! I will pass that on to him :D
DeleteThe cakes looks yummy and what a great husband to put in so much time researching for the right recipes.
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday!
Have a wonderful week,
Bev
@ Eclectic Red Barn
He for sure is my best thing ♥ Thanks for stopping by and checking it out!
DeleteHey... hopping over from An Original Belle. Thanks so much for continuing to link up fabulous posts each week. Your husband really put a lot of thought and effort into his gift to you and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about it. He seems to know what you love the most and made it happen! Thanks for sharing. Happy birthday!
ReplyDeleteThank you :) He really did do a lot of thinking for this year's cake, and it was all worth it - so special and so delicious! Thanks for taking the time to have a read!!
Deletehappy birthday to you!
ReplyDeletebest wishes!
big hugs
Thank you so much Anastasia!
DeleteI love this! Being from England I love Cadbury's and it also annoys me how many "chocolate" cake recipes just use cocoa. Nicely done.
ReplyDeleteYES exactly! That's just what he was thinking (and looking back on what was a secret then, also what I would have been thinking had I have been making it!)... this was a really delicious, dense and moist cake that lasted a good few days and tasted really wonderful with Cadbury's :) Thanks for stopping by!
DeleteThat cake looks lovely. Good job Hubby.
ReplyDeleteThank you Joy! I will tell him :D Thank you for checking it out :)
DeleteThis is so lovely :) what a great husband you have!
ReplyDeleteHehe yes I think so!! It was a great surprise and a delicious cake :D Thank you for coming by to have a read!
DeleteWhat a sweet husband you have! He did a great job.
ReplyDeleteI will for sure pass on this comment to him - he really did do a great surprise and it was so good! Thanks for reading :)
DeleteOoooh, that's so sweet.....in more ways than one. Lol. The cake looks great. Jonathan did a wonderful job!
ReplyDeleteI will tell him!! Thank you :) Great to have you here checking out my first guest post!!
DeleteAgreed #besthusband. That's so cute. I think I need to go have a chat with mine. ;) Thanks for sharing! Stop by my Friday's Five Features and link up this post (and others)! http://diy-vintage-chic.blogspot.com/2013/09/fridays-five-features-no-7.html
ReplyDeleteJust casually leave this page up for him to see :-P Thanks for the invite to your link party - I've added it to my list and I'll be there this week :)
DeleteAwwwww so sweet! :) Wonderful job, Jonathan!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much Anyonita! He was honestly SO excited to be featured on your Tasty Tuesday this week! So glad you could come over and check it out :)
DeleteHappy belated birthday :)
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful birthday cake! And a great tutorial!
Thanks for sharing this over on Tutorial Thursdays Linky Party, your tutorial will be featured tomorrow (09.12)
Pinned and FB
x
Natalie
Marigolds' Loft
WOW yey! Thank you so much for featuring this - my husband will be very excited!
DeleteThis is so sweet.. Happy birthday! :)
ReplyDeleteThe cake looks delicious..
Thanks so much Hani! It was amazing, and I'll definitely be trying this recipe again :) Thanks for reading!
Delete