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Flo Braker's Dark Chocolate Cake Recipe

[UPDATE 9/21/09: I got permission from the wonderful Flo Braker to post the correct and complete version of the Dark Chocolate Cake Recipe from Baking for All Occasions. The recipe at the bottom of this post, but the correction is to add the melted chocolate to the batter just after the eggs.]

Back in March, I was a lucky enough duck to not only have baking legend Flo Braker sign my copy of Baking for All Occasions at Omnivore Books (the only all cookbook store in San Francisco), but also?

 Flo brought baked goods from her very own kitchen. And not only did she sign my book, but much to my delight, actually hand wrote a correction to the dark chocolate cake recipe! Part of my delight was seeing how much it irritated her that there was an error. I can relate. Especially given the ridiculously hard time I had updating this post. 

Raspberry~Filled Chocolate Sour Cream Cupcakes

Last week at happy hour, a coworker of mine noticed me lugging around a birthday cake for my next stop of the evening and lamented that I never made anything for him. Lucky for him, these jabs work on me if I know you. Put on a little puss and I am usually suckered into making something. Especially if the thing I just made (i.e. aforementioned birthday cake) was a disappointment and I feel the need to redeem myself. So I asked him what he wanted and he made a specific request: dark chocolate cupcakes with raspberry filling.

Ooh. Filling.

I had some leftover homemade raspberry coulis(which is even more fun to write than "I had some leftover homemade stock") from making the filling for another cake. And given that the coulis demands so much of a poor girl's time running the berries through a sieve or a food mill to remove the seeds, it's a terrible shame to let any go to waste.

The cake is a devil's food recipe with sour cream I use a lot, with a fudgy pan frosting. I love frostings with cooked sugar (i.e. not powdered sugar) and this one was adapted from an Anne Byrd recipe.

The recipe for the coulis was the raspberry sauce and puree recipe from The Cake Bible. I have used it before with great success as a filling for a dark chocolate cake, a sauce to serve with the cake and to flavor buttercream. Rose Levy Beranbaum's technique of reducing the juice drained off the berries, pureeing the pulp and heightening the flavor with fresh lemon juice results in a very intense raspberry flavor. The filling tastes so fresh and looks so beautiful I would gladly lick it off cardboard, so thank you Rose for making me look good!

I had about a cup of coulis and it was the perfect amount to fill 22 cupcakes. Since I couldn't find a succinct description of how to fill cupcakes after a perfunctory search, and it is a question I am most often asked, the filling is put into cupcake after it has baked with a pastry bag fitted with a pastry tip (a bismark tip is ideal but you can use any large round tip).

You can see a better shot of the filling here. Altough I probably got overzealous with applying pressure wile getting the filling into the cupcake at right, it does give a peek of the bright pink puree inside.

The coworker? He ate four of them.

Lemon Poppyseed Chiffon Cupcakes

Here are the photos of the cupcakes. I think I have come upon my favorite combination to flavor lemon cake - lemon oil, juice and zest. The oil adds a concentrated lemon flavor without the acidity of juice* or the texture of zest. The juice adds a freshness and brightness that cannot be replaced.

They are topped with a lemon buttermilk glaze.

I am still working on the recipe because I feel it could be a touch more moist (maybe an egg yolk, oil, or less baking time?) but I will post it.

Because I wanted to to try crystallizing some edible flowers (according to Rose's method), I got a mixed package of edible flowers with some snapdragons and pansies, and put those on top. I learned that the finer (and more even) layer of egg white you brush onto the petals, the better. Also, instead of using a bulk pastry brush, you have a lot more precision with a tiny paint brush.

Off to test more!

*Thanks to Cathy on Rose's forum for pointing out that "adding acid to a cake can make it set up too quickly in the oven, leaving it low and dense." Don't add lemon juice to a cake recipe willy nilly! To add lemon flavor without affecting the structure of a cake, you can safely add a small amount (1/4 tsp for a batch of cupcakes or 9" layer cake) of lemon oil and up to a tablespoon of freshly grated zest to batter.