chocolate cake

All day I was craving cake. At first I thought I wanted a yellow cake with chocolate icing. But, when I thought about how to make one I realized I have no idea what makes a yellow cake yellow and have a different flavor than a white cake (yolk of course, but what about the flavor?). And since I didn't want to bake a cake from a box, I decided maybe yellow cakes are whacky anyway (though, I suppose if I found a recipe to make it, maybe that wouldn't be the case).

Then I realized what I should make. A spicy chocolate cake with thin white frosting. It turned out really well (I think, and Joe confirmed) so, I wanted to pass on the recipe:

Spicy Chocolate Cake
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 to 1 cups sugar (I used 1/2 cup, raw sugar but it's not a very sweet cake)
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
a heaping 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 tbsp butter (soft)
1 cup warm water
1 tbsp white vinegar
a cap full of vanilla extract

Combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, soda, powder, and salt. These should be sifted, it helps de-compact the flour and particular the cocoa powder, which tends to stick together. I don't have a sifter, so I just whisk it- adding air to the mix.

Mix applesauce, butter, water, vinegar, and vanilla together. Mix the wet ingredients with the dry ones. Here, I added cayenne pepper- several pinches until when I tasted the batter it had a good taste with a slight burn in the back of my throat- and a little cinnamon also.

Bake it at 350 for 20-35 min. I used two small round pans (8 inch?) so the toothpick was clean after 20 min but it could take longer if you use a bigger pan. I then mixed powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk together to make a drizzly icing (the milk:sugar ratio is crazy- at least 50:1- probably even more than that). This makes a VERY sweet icing- which goes nice with a slightly bitter cake. I thought about adding cinnamon, or how next time it might be nice to use a whipping cream and make it creamier. I imagine that would be nice, but I guess I've never done it before. You can also do that by using butter I suppose (which, I was out of).



Oh, the cake mix may want to be multiplied by 1 1/2 or so, I think either another layer or thicker layers would have been good. I also think these would make wonderful cupcakes.