Thoughts on chocolate cake

And a simple countertop cake that delivers

The idea for this post started with a carton of sour milk. There comes a time when the people you live with complain so often that there’s no milk in the house that you end up with about four cartons on the bottom shelf of the fridge, and eventually one of them goes sour. That’s precisely what happened to me the other morning as I was about to pour it over my bowl of bran flakes. But then my instincts took over, I took a whiff and yes, the milk was kaput. Ever the optimist, I even boiled it to see if it I couldn’t make a crème caramel with it, but when started to curdle I knew I’d either have to ditch it or find an alternate use.

My first instinct was pancakes, but as I wasn’t in the mood for pancakes (a first for me) I remembered that my grandmother used to make a great chocolate cake with sour milk. So before even finishing my cereal, I started down the rabbit hole of sour milk recipes. I have my share of favourite sourdough starter discard recipes, but sour milk recipes? Not so much.

Turns out there are plenty of sour milk recipes out there because it can be used instead of buttermilk in most cases. And when I say sour milk, I’m referring to milk just recently past its prime because milk that makes you want to wretch the minute you open the carton or pours out in big clumps isn’t what you’re after here.

I’ve been on the hunt for the BEST chocolate cake for a while now and if you have a look at the number of Instagram chocolate cake posts out there you see that I’m not the only chocolate cake obsessive. Chocolate cake is definitely a thing these days, especially the gooey, extra-chocolatey dark ones called “Matilda’s chocolate cake” inspired by a rather gruesome scene in the 1996 movie "Matilda.”

I like a rich (let’s avoiding saying “decadent” shall we) chocolate cake but have my limits. When testing cakes for my last book, I made myself quite sick trying out chocolate cake recipes before settling on a medium-rich one I really love, but as it didn’t contain sour milk or buttermilk I couldn’t use that.

Whenever I’m a bit bored, I tend to pull out a new chocolate cake recipe to try out and recently had a go at Clare Saffitz’s chocolate cake she made for the New York Times, which I loved but my in-house critics my kids found too rich. I also love this cake from Food & Wine, but really more for its icing than the cake itself. And the one from my first book, Make Every Dish Delicious, is another favourite. I just can’t stop trying, though, and will certainly be on this quest until my baking days are done.

A chocolate swirl cake, a common sight on my kitchen counter.

But until then, I have come to some chocolate cake conclusions. The icing is key, and as I really haven’d found better than the one from Food & Wine, I will stick to that. It calls for unsweetened chocolate but I accidentally used bittersweet and it was fine. I don’t like the crusty frostings made with a ton of icing sugar and prefer the sort made with a ganache base using hot cream and chocolate that’s later whipped with a bit of butter.

As for the cake itself, frankly, a lot of them taste the same. Some of the best are made with oil, which gives a moister texture, and some sort of coffee flavouring takes the cake from ho-hum to great. If a chocolate cake recipe doesn’t have coffee somewhere in its makeup, move on!

For now, I quite like this simple cake, and judging by how quickly it disappeared off of my kitchen counter, I’d say it’s a big winner. And though it calls for sour milk (which you can make yourself but putting a teaspoon of lemon juice in a glass of good milk and letting it stand for a few minutes until it curdles), feel free to use buttermilk.

You can make this cake as i did in a 9X13’ pan, or two 9-inch round layers. but if you make a layer cake, you’ll have to double the icing recipe. I don’t like an overly-rich chocolate cake, but an underly-rich chocolate cake is a real tragedy.

This is a perfect bake for the weekend. And I’ll bet you anything it will be polished off by Sunday night.

Simple Chocolate Countertop Cake

Makes about 12 servings