Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake with "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Frosting

Random: more food photos taken from my Facebook page! I don't know why I didn't just upload these on Flickr. Maybe the quality wouldn't have compromised if I did.

Wow. That name sure is long. This is my favorite chocolate cupcake ever. Actually, this is the first chocolate cake recipe I tried when I started learning how to bake two years ago. I never felt the need to look for another. It's that good. And, and, and you can find the recipe on the back of a Hershey's cocoa can. How's that for convenient? Unless you don't use Hershey's cocoa powder. Then, never mind.

And just to again show everyone how good I am at keeping on top of things, I baked these in December of last year.

Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake with "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Frosting

From Hershey's

Makes 60-ish mini cupcakes

2 cups sugar

1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup cocoa (I used dutch-processed)

1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

1 cup milk

1/2 cup canola oil

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup boiling water

1. Heat oven to 350°F. Place cupcake liners on mini cupcake pans..

2. Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans, filling cupcake pans 2/3 full.

3. Bake 8-10 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely. Frost with "PERFECTLY CHOCOLATE" CHOCOLATE FROSTING.

"PERFECTLY CHOCOLATE" CHOCOLATE FROSTING

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine

2/3 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa

3 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Melt butter. Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating to spreading consistency.

Add small amount additional milk, if needed. Stir in vanilla. About 2 cups frosting.

White Cupcakes and Vanilla Frosting

Hoo boy. It seems like I'm really bad at this blogging thing. I made these cupcakes in September of last year. My computer had been reformatted twice and I just took these photos from Facebook. Oh, the joys of being a procrastinator.

Anyway, back to the cupcakes. White cake is something I've eaten pretty late in life. The first time was last year! Chocolate has always been my first choice when it comes to cakes, mocha being the second. Anything else is tolerable but doesn't excite me. I guess that's what years of eating dry and tasteless vanilla cake does to you.

But this recipe changed my attitude towards vanilla cakes in general. This isn't the first white cake recipe that I've tried but this was by far the best. The others were a reminiscent of the vanilla cake of my youth, dry and tasteless (see one here). I'm so glad I chanced upon this recipe because it's just everything I want in a non-chocolate cupcake. Moist, fluffy and not sickeningly sweet.

What I love about this recipe is that you don't have to whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold it in the batter. Just mix it in with some milk and beat it into the flour mixture in two additions. Folding egg whites is one of my downfalls in this baking thing. That's probably why before this recipe, I've never made white cake successfully.

I topped it with my favorite frosting which I've posted on this blog before. I love it so much. It tastes good and is cheap to make. Perfect for a broke, college student.

White Cake

From The Way the Cookie Crumbles

Serves 12

Nonstick cooking spray

2¼ cups cake flour (9 ounces), plus more for dusting the pans

1 cup + 2 tablespoons whole milk, at room temperature

6 large egg whites (¾ cup), at room temperature

2 teaspoons almond extract

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1½ cups + 2 tablespoons granulated sugar (11.35 ounces)

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon table salt

12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1½ sticks), softened but still cool

1. For the Cake: Set oven rack in middle position. (If oven is too small to cook both layers on a single rack, set racks in upper-middle and lower-middle positions.) Heat oven to 350 degrees. Spray two 9-inch round cake pans with nonstick cooking spray; line the bottoms with parchment or waxed paper rounds. Spray the paper rounds, dust the pans with flour, and invert pans and rap sharply to remove excess flour.

2. Pour milk, egg whites, and extracts into 2-cup glass measure, and mix with fork until blended.

3. Mix cake flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in bowl of electric mixer at slow speed. Add butter; continue beating at slow speed until mixture resembles moist crumbs, with no powdery streaks remaining.

4. Add all but ½ cup of milk mixture to crumbs and beat at medium speed (or high speed if using handheld mixer) for 1½ minutes. Add remaining ½ cup of milk mixture and beat 30 seconds more. Stop mixer and scrape sides of bowl. Return mixer to medium (or high) speed and beat 20 seconds longer.

5. Divide batter evenly between two prepared cake pans; using rubber spatula, spread batter to pan walls and smooth tops. Arrange pans at least 3 inches from the oven walls and 3 inches apart. (If oven is small, place pans on separate racks in staggered fashion to allow for air circulation.) Bake until thin skewer or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 23 to 25 minutes.

6. Let cakes rest in pans for 3 minutes. Loosen from sides of pans with a knife, if necessary, and invert onto wire racks. Reinvert onto additional wire racks. Let cool completely, about 1½ hours.

Frosting recipe here.

White Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting

Taking pictures for this blog can be an adventure. First off, I use a point-and-shoot camera. It's not really that bad. What's hard is finding a good spot in our house that has a lot of natural light.

Yesterday, I baked white cupcakes with vanilla frosting. It was a bit cloudy and the light present was less than ideal. All my pictures were dark. So I decided to head out to the garage and take pictures there. I also brought a piece of bond paper to serve as my background. Cute craft papers is something I should really buy.

Most of the time, my picture-taking skillz are non-existent. A lot of things that are not supposed to be in the shot is included. Sometimes my hand makes a guest appearance and then an otherwise good shot is ruined. I'm still practicing and I'm hoping that practice does really make you better.

But what I didn't expect when I took these pictures was our dogs wanting to eat the cupcakes. It become hard to take shots of cupcakes while trying to fend off hungry dogs so I called for reinforcements. My sister came and distracted the dogs while I quickly took pictures.

The brown one is Kokoy (don't ask me about the name, I don't know either) and the other is Bobby. Bobby was not that really interested in the food he just wanted to be held. Kokoy, on the other hand, was a crazy one. He did everything to get to eat the cupcakes. He was jumping, running and escaping from my sister so I also needed to be on guard most of the time.

In the end, though, the cupcakes made it without any casualties.

My cupcakes turned out dense. It's not really the recipe's fault. I was being stupid and used a way too small bowl for four eggwhites. The top part was already at stiff peaks but when I was ready to fold it into the batter it was still liquid at the bottom. I didn't want to wash the beaters again so I just left it as is. The cupcake still tasted delicious though.

Oh, about the 200 cupcakes and 200 cookies we baked, as you can see, I'm still alive :o I'm really grateful for my cousins' help because otherwise I would've gone crazy. And it also helped that I pre-measured the dry ingredients during the week.

Snow White Vanilla Birthday Cake

From Sweetapolita

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter

2 cups white sugar

3 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 cups ice water

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

4 egg whites beaten stiff

Method:

Add sugar to the butter and beat until light. Sift dry ingredients and add alternately with ice water and flavourings, beating thoroughly after each addition. Fold in the beaten egg whites. Pour into greased layer pans and bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.

That’s the Best Frosting I’ve Ever Had (I halved this)

From Tasty Kitchen

5 Tablespoons Flour

1 cup Milk

1 teaspoon Vanilla

1 cup Butter

1 cup Granulated Sugar (not Powdered Sugar!)

In a small saucepan, whisk flour into milk and heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens. You want it to be very thick, thicker than cake mix, more like a brownie mix is. Remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature. It must be completely cool before you use it in the next step. Stir in vanilla.

While the mixture is cooling, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. You don’t want any sugar graininess left. Then add the completely cooled milk/flour/vanilla mixture and beat the living daylights out of it. If it looks separated, you haven’t beaten it enough! Beat it until it all combines and resembles whipped cream.