Chris Makes Easy Chocolate Cake | From the Test Kitchen | Bon Appétit

I love the story of the easiest

chocolate

birthday

cake

because it's so personal to me and even though I didn't make it, what do you guys do, Brad? Do you want a

chocolate

cake

? This is what was happening. You can participate in this. Okay, amber. She kept making me cakes on my birthday. I returned home on my birthday and it was as if no one anywhere could have dinner. Well, children, my God, your cake is just a little fubar. Okay, so we're developing this. Remember when I did this with Kat? It will be OK. so this can be the one for every birthday from now on that's the cake, okay, happy birthday, thanks friend, my favorite dessert, whether it's my birthday or not, my birthday is just a simple chocolate cake, give me the cake chocolate with a little chocolate frosting and very happy, you know, I'm going to prepare you a recipe that you can make for me every year on my birthday and this is a deliciously delicious and chocolate birthday cake that is very simple to make, the Cake itself is even easier than frosting, so imagine this is just the most standard cake pan.

A great way to make working with this as

easy

as possible is to brush it very lightly with oil, but I have to go all the way and get myself a pocket protector. Just trace the bottom of the mold, so this will mean that the bottom of the cake will come loose very easily from the mold, so with the pen down, with the pen down, no, it's not going to be because it's a pen with the side Down, boys, you with me. I wasn't sure what else I was going to do to explain it another way, with the pen side down with a butter-based cake.

Normally what you would do is cream the butter with the sugar, add the eggs, build structure or volume, incorporate air, you know. This is how the cake acquires much of its structure. This is an oil-based cake, so you don't really have to do any of that, which is part of what

makes

it the easiest possible cake you can make for a birthday or any other event. I have 1 and 1/3 cup all-purpose flour 1 and 1/4 cup granulated sugar 1 and 3/4 teaspoon baking powder I have 1 and 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt and then I have 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda, whisk it up a little bit right now, next, this is one of my least favorite

kitchen

tasks, you might remember things like peeling thyme leaves, chopping chocolate, this is great, this is there for me , you have to do it?

Sift the cocoa, yes you don't have to, but the cocoa ends up being lumpy and fighting you in that dough, so anything you can do to break it up now you'll thank yourself later, hell, you might even thank me. I'm going to whisk this so that it now incorporates beautifully with the rest of the dry ingredients, no lumps, make sure you get all the little bits on the bottom, so now for our wet ingredients we have two large eggs and we haven't learned how to crack a one yet. egg with one hand. I know this will be the year I broke that 3/4 cup of vegetable oil a teaspoon of vanilla, so at this point we're going to put the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. with a spatula because this is going to get very thick I just want to incorporate everything smooth out the lumps and then I'm going to take this milk here this cup of milk I'm going to heat it up the fact that it's hot the cocoa flavor is going to bloom and it really opens up that cocoa flavor, so anyway this very, very thick cake batter looks completely bad, but I hope in a couple of minutes it will look a lot better.

I'm not trying to boil the milk, but I want to get to the point right before it boils, so it'll just be a minute. I'm not going to deviate. I'm not going to check my Instagram. Okay, right here, focused on this because I really don't want to. overflow, I'm not necessarily looking for bubbles to form. I want to see that moment where you're about to have bubbles where you see those little like wisps of steam coming in. I want to see a scroll, give me. a strand, come on, okay, strand, so now is where we're going to go back to the whisk, so at first it won't want to cooperate, you want to beat it completely, but not overmix, but honestly do it by hand, there is a way.

There's less risk of that, so there you go, which is why you want to have your pan prepped and ready to go when you are. I just camped out some of those bigger bubbles here and we're going to take this right into the oven and here we go. everything is fine there, the ready cakes look beautiful, so if you have a cake

test

er, of course, you know you can use it. I feel like these lie, kik

test

ers lie, it's okay, they'll tell you whatever you want to hear, so go ahead. this little wooden skewer is fine, so if you have any undercooked cakes it's much more likely to turn up on one of these types.

This looks great, it's glazed, so that's four ounces of semisweet chocolate. Try not to exceed 64% cocoa. Since certain chocolates can get a little funky when melted and used in a ganache, so bear with us anyway, let's get to the stove. Part of the base of this frosting is a ganache which is just a mixture of heavy cream and chocolate. I'm going to make this, this is half a cup of heavy cream, four ounces of chocolate, okay, we'll do it in a double boiler. You'll notice you know it's a non-reactive container and the water doesn't touch the bottom of the container here so the chocolate starts to melt here okay I can lower the heat if you see you know a lot of steam escaping means it's like bubbling down there, just lower the heat, calm down, check your diet, okay and yeah, we'll be back in a second, okay, so smooth and well incorporated.

I'm going to set this aside to let it cool for about 25 minutes or so until it sets and then we'll fold it into our frosting so that the ganache has shields, okay, I have room. cream cheese at temperature we need 4 ounces of this, which is half of this bar, so our extra quarter teaspoon of kosher salt is going to be put here in the frosting, it's going to help bring out that chocolate flavor and it's going to make everything taste so much. better. a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract and then 1/4 cup of confectioners' sugar. You know, an electric mixer really does very little work with this, so I just want to get this all nice and smooth to make sure it incorporates really well with the cooled ganache, so this ganache hasn't completely set, it will continue to set. as it cools further, but it is a great temperature to incorporate with the cream cheese.

They both match in terms of fluidity and density at this point, so you can see, relative to where we started, it's already starting to hold its shape a little bit more. I'm going to go a little further and then we'll be there. Drop the parchment round, okay, boom, hello, I eat those apples, this is what I don't do. we're not even, oh my god, we're, oh god, I know, I'm sorry, I'm making your cake, how do you think I made it? By now you've done the work, you just want to eat the cake, so why are you going to do something that takes forever and stresses you out, yeah, no offense Claire, you know, yeah, so show them the technique of the spoon, everyone is so used to eating shitty cakes like the ones from the supermarket, who like that if you actually give people a cake that you make yourself, they rate it. of going crazy in a good way and you could end up here this could be it, you could end up I would have liked to call it okay, we would be eating by now, but okay, take it one step further.

I want to do that cure, yeah, scroll down, just press the sign on this and you'll get these lovely little ones, you know, the tails turned out so fabulously well. Did you see how I did it? Oh my God, I was sitting there sweating, like I was going to have to do it. Do it on camera and I'll have to do it and pretend I know what I'm doing and then, yeah, like an angel who appears out of nowhere and does it totally for me anyway, let's get into this, right? ready for the cake, this is a sneak peek at my 40th birthday.

Things are suddenly looking a little darker up here. Can I draw your attention to how amazing this looks? There are no bells, there are no whistles, like it's just chocolate cake, it tastes amazing. Brad, have your coffee, let's go and get some cake and you get a cake just a hint of delicious Christmas. I like my only nan cake. I could use a third best cake. You want less like cake. It's okay, we're very good. You're done, it's all done, it's all ready, we're ready, it's okay, wait, you guys are sharing, it's okay, it's okay, thank you, it's spicy, it's bright, it's chocolatey, it's deep, it's rich, It's moist, it's true, it's just a good cake. okay, with the exception of Brad, everyone loved it, even Gabby gobbled it up, yes Brad, Brad apparently doesn't even like cake, okay, swallow it, yes, great, it's incredibly delicious, it really doesn't require much effort, no, you did great. work we did a great job I think we forgot to make the coffee or well zero I'll go make coffee