Wool and Spice

It’s been a while (a month!) since I’ve posted any recipes. I haven’t given up on cooking/baking and based upon how tight my jeans are, I haven’t made much progress in dieting either. That could be because I’m really good at rationalizing the need for cheese or potato chips or a glass of wine. Or all three. Particularly after a long day.

Anyhoo, let’s talk about something much more fun.

Like chocolate.

Specifically chocolate cake.

Specifically chocolate cake that’s low-cal (sort of), moist and great tasting.

I don’t know if I’ve said it before but I use the Eating Well website all the time and subscribe to their magazine. They cook the way I mostly like to cook. They use real ingredients and concentrate on making food that’s healthy and still tastes good. Their recipes limit butter and saturated fats, opting for olive or vegetable oil and use ingredients like buttermilk in baked goods to keep them moist and tender. Not everything I’ve made from their recipes works, but I can usually tweak the ingredients to suit our tastes.

I was pleased when I found a recipe for a chocolate cake that looked like something we’d enjoy and I was right. I’ve made it a few times now and it’s become a favorite. It’s quick and easy to make, no sifting of flour a million times, no separating of eggs and whipping whites and all that jazz. Yet you still end up with a cake that is moist with plenty of chocolate flavor and just the right texture and heft.

I’ve made a minor modification to the recipe, which was to substitute espresso powder for hot coffee. You don’t taste the coffee in the cake, but I think it helps intensify the chocolate flavor. I also changed to a chocolate glaze because I didn’t like the icing they used. My glaze increases the calories and fat but I believe it’s worth it.

The calorie count is somewhere in the neighborhood of 225 – 275 calories, depending upon if you use their icing or my glaze. Without the glaze there are 4 grams of fat and only one of those is from saturated fat.

And truthfully, this cake is so moist you don’t need any icing, just a dusting of confectioners’ sugar if you’re feeling just the tiniest bit guilty about eating chocolate cake.

(Of course you know that if you eat your cake standing up over the sink, there are no calories or fat grams at all. I think that’s true of potato chips too.)

Sorry I don’t have a better picture but we were reaching the end of the cake when I remembered to take a photo. By then all the good-looking parts had been eaten.

Here’s the original Died-and-Went-to-Heaven chocolate cake

My version:

1 3/4 cups all-purpose white flour
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup canola oil
2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 – 4 teaspoons (rounded) espresso powder
1 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly oil a 12-cup Bundt pan or coat it with nonstick cooking spray. Dust the pan with flour, invert and shake out the excess. (This never works for me. The only way my cakes don’t stick is if I use Baker’s Joy spray.)

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, white sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

Add buttermilk, brown sugar, eggs, oil and vanilla; beat with an electric mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes.

Combine boiling water and espresso powder and whisk into batter until completely incorporated. (The batter will be quite thin.)

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool the cake in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes; remove from the pan and let cool completely. Glaze and enjoy.

Chocolate Glaze:

1 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup milk or half and half
6 oz. or 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Put sugar, butter and milk in a small saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Let boil for about a minute then remove from heat and stir in chocolate chips.  When the glaze is smooth, pour it over the cake. This will be thin but it will firm up as it cools.

This recipe makes a LOT of glaze. I had a little fudge lake in the middle of the cake with little puddles of fudge around the outside. So if you’re just not into that much fudge you might want to cut the glaze recipe in half. Silly you.

I haven’t made this cake in anything but a Bundt pan but I don’t see any reason you couldn’t turn it into cupcakes or a layer cake.

Tags: baking, chocolate cake