Buttercream frosted chocolate cake

 {cake pans prepared}

 {cooling off}

 {wrapped to keep moist}

 {filling}

 {swiss buttercream}

{frosted and garnished with sprinkles}

  

It was my first ever go at baking a proper cake, with layers. I did a bit of documentation and ended up deciding on these two: layers / frosting. Both from Smitten Kitchen, of course. I tell you, this lady knows here stuff. I have tried a lot of her recipes because she just makes them seem so easy and uncomplicated. And will continue to do so.

First and foremost I finally went and bought two proper cake layer pans, 9 inch, 22-23 cm diameter. I had thought they were useless and that you could bake a perfectly good one single cake and slice it in half and fill it out, like I did a lot of times. But it's way easier with these around, less fuss and less of a chance of destroying the layers. I'm glad I did, and will now proceed to bake cakes more often and with all special occasions. Because why not?

The layers were easy to make, they turned out really intense because of the chocolate/coffee/cocoa powder combination and similar to a good brownie. Although I may, in the future, brush them off with a little simple syrup (water and sugar - boiled down) to get it a bit of moisture. For my 9 inch pans, Deb from smitten has a note there at the end of the Chocolate Cake Layers, where she tells you exactly the measurements for a 9 inch two layer cake, so I followed that, like I follow all her instructions exactly. It was perfect.

Frosting.

Of all of the frosting recipes I had considered making, this has the least amount of butter in it. 360 grams of butter. I know it already seems a lot, and it kind of is. But I really wanted a good/proper American frosting recipe. Standard American butter cream frosting s are made with powdered sugar and butter, whipped really good. But imagine how that must taste, like eating sweetened fat. I'm not OK with that. So you have to search well, and see what you'll go for. The frosting I tried from Deb has a meringue start up, from where you start adding the butter.

And adding I began. And I was a wreck and nervous the whole time and angry because at first it wouldn't work and it began to curdle. I considered throwing it away, but then as I gave it a last go with the mixer it magically turned the right consistency. I was amazed. I thought it was like magic, like this is so unpredictable, it could go any way it wanted to...

It is a rich frosting, even with the egg whites. It was tasty with the vanilla and all, but aside that it did not have much flavor to it. I want to make a semi-sweet chocolate buttercream frosting the next time. That surely has more flavor to it.

So I started frosting it and I did a decent job, I think... And added these sprinkles I found, but was not that happy about them. I swear I did not find any proper sprinkles anywhere. I would have loved to find some similar to these. Next time the search for proper sprinkles shall be thorough.

To wrap things up, this was a big, rich cake, just like Americans like it. Cut thin slices and enjoy little by little, spread a few slices to family and friends. I did and did not.