Some Like it Hot

Devils food cake with tart sour cherry jam and nutella butter cream frosting

So in July we celebrated DH’s birthday, and one of the things he always asks for is chocolate cake. Being the wonderful wife that I am I decided to make him a cake. I searched through a lot of recipe books but nothing appealed to DH until I decided to take matters into my own hands. I decided that I would start off with a recipe from Cooks Illustrated, and modify the recipe.

Now, I love sweets, but sometimes the cakes and cookies are way too sweet, and I have to reduce the sugar. I cannot follow a recipe no matter how hard I try most days. I must tweak it to my taste, and before you say anything I did taste this recipe as is, when I made it with J (not Jo). I liked it but I perfer a much more dense, and sweet cake. So, my cake has less sugar but more brown sugar to white sugar. I also wrapped and placed the cake in the freezer over night, and defrosted it before frosting.

My cake was dense, and so much chocolate flavour to knock your socks off. I also added a bit of very bitter chocolate to the cake. I filled the cake with home made sour cherry jam I made this summer and wow did it pop! I used the butter cream recipe and scraping a jar clean of Nutella, but the nutella taste was weak, and I had tons of frosting left over that I threw the rest out. But the weak nutella flavour seemed to be a nice foil for the chocolate and sour cherry.

DH was extremely happy, the cake got better as the days went on. The cake was fragile on the first day, but it seemed to have its own gravity well, by the second day in the frigerator. The flavour was best on the 2-4 days. We also ate a slice of cake about a week and a half later and it was still tasty!

You will have to hunt down your own recipe for the sour cherry jam or go and buy a jar. Also I will not post the nutella butter cream recipe because I wasn’t too happy with it, and will have to tinker a bit. Now if you really want the recipes e-mail me, because I am too nice and can’t say no?

So here is the devils food cake with a lot of changes. Oh I go between grams and oz because my scale can’t seem to go in oz that low but it does really well in grams.

Side view. It's hard to see the 3 layers but they are there! The cake was very dense, chewy fudgy goodness.

DEVILS FOOD CAKE
Adapted from Cooks Illustrated

1.4 oz Semi sweet chocolate (I used Belgium chocolate)
3 oz Unsweetened chocolate (I used a German Zarbitter chocolate)
0.8 oz Valhrona dutched cocoa powder
1 1/4 C. boiling water (next time I would use hot Coffee)
3.7 oz A.P. Flour
8 g Baking Soda
1 g Salt
8 oz Butter
6.6 oz Brown Sugar
4.6 oz Sour Cream
3 large Eggs at room temperature.

Have the oven rack in the middle position, and preheat your oven to 350 degrees. You may need another rack on the lower part of the oven to fit all three-cake pans. Grease three 8-inch diameter cake pans. Then place parchment paper on the bottom of the tins and grease again. I floured my cake tins with cocoa powder.

Combine all the chocolate and cocoa powder and pour in the boiling water, mix till everything is combined and the chocolate have melted. In another bowl mix the flour baking soda and salt and then sift onto parchment paper or back into the bowl. You will be alternating ingredients so just make sure it will be easier to pour in dry ingredients.

Beat the butter until creamy, and the sugar and beat again until it fluffs. You may have to scrape the bowl. Mix in the eggs one at a time and beat on medium speed, add the other eggs after the first is incorporated. Add the sour cream and vanilla and mix until combined. On low speed add in the 1/3 of the flour followed by 1/2 of the chocolate mix until barely combined you should end using the flour. Using a spatula gently mix the cake batter until all flour is combined.

Evenly divide the batter into the cake tins. Bake cakes all the middle rack or places them on the middle or lower racks. Bake the cakes until you have moist crumbles on the toothpicks, but not wet. It took me about 15-20 minutes. You will have to watch your cake.

Take out the cake and let cool for 1/2 hour in the tin. Carefully take out the cake and wrap in plastic wrap and freeze. The cake is delicate so be careful. I froze my cake over night and let it defrost in the frigerator. This makesthe cake more denser, and the flavours seem to meld better.

When the cake is fully defrosted level the cake if they need it, and fill and frost with your favourite filling.

I filled it with homemade sour cherry jam, and then made a nutella butter cream frosting. I would recommend you chill the cake in the frigerator but it doesn’t need it.

DH and I decided we needed lunch but I had just finished mopping the kitchen floor. Yeah, the floor was wet and well I couldn’t walk in there with my feet… Yeah so I got out of cooking lunch, because we had to let the floor in the kitchen dry.

We were a little indecisive, about where to eat at first but remembered a place in downtown Stuttgart that had coffee and sold sandwiches and soup.

We decided to go to San’s Sandwich Bar, I noticed this place while we were sitting at another cafe drinking coffee. It seemed to always be crowded at lunch time, DH and I usually eat breakfast and luch a bit earlier then the crowds, and need a snack by the time lunch crowd came out.

There is a small case in front near the register which looks like ciabatta and foccacia sanwiches. There is also a large refrigerated sections with salads, sandwiches, desserts, muesli and fruit. There are huge lamp shades in orange red that hang from the ceiling. Everyone is friendly and can speak alittle english, but we tried out limited german. It is a really nice place, with long tables on really high stools, but then again I am pretty short. They offer different soups, salads, cereals, sandwiches, and drinks. I was really enticed by a customer carrying a bowl of soup with blue berries on top. So, I opted for the Kartoffel Pfifferling soup, a potato and chanterelle soup with crème fraîche. It came with chive garnish, and three lovely blue berries on top. Also it had a healthy bit of crème fraîche that had sunk to the bottom of the soup. DH swirled the soup and it went from clear broth to creamy white. The potatoes were soft but still a little firm so they didn’t turn to mush when you bit into them. The chanterelles were generous and plentiful, and golden against the creamy white soup. Yeah this was outstanding soup. The soup came with three pieces of bread, a slice of french, and two slices of dark bread with nuts and seeds.

DH “Yeah we can’t eat this all the time but the soup is excellent!”

DH pulled a Thai Sandwich from the deli case, and we were intrigued to see what it would taste like. It had some kind of mayo or schmaltz maybe smeared on the bread. The bread was softer then most german breads, but still denser then white. It had lettuce and red bell peppers, and pickled ginger, and turkey marinated in something. I cannot place the taste, but the sandwich was delicious. You can have your bread toasted from the front counter, but we opted not to have the bread toasted this time. Dh thought he tasted some lemon grass but found the pickled ginger delicious and did not taste the lemon grass at all.

Me: I so could make this sandwich at home, but it sure is tasty.

I am glad I ate the sandwich first because the sandwich was delicious, but the soup stole the show. It made a nice light lunch, and the place is pretty popular with the lunch time business and tourist. The last time DH and I were there we had the house coffee which was quite good. the prices there aren’t bad. The soup was excellent and the sandwiches are good, but we haven’t tried everything there yet. I wouldn’t definitely go back there again! For 2 bottled waters, one sandwich and one soup landed us at 12.30 euro, not too bad and both of us were full. I would say that for someone used to eating a lot more might be hungry so you might not want to share, and if you have the potato and chanterelle soup make sure you get your own bowl or you might fight on your hands.

San’s Sanwich Bar
Kleiner Schloßplatz 13
70173 Stuttgart, Germany

I wish I had may camera when I first got to Germany, because it seemed there were a lot food porn. I mean ads on how to stop AIDS. The use of food and condoms were visually interesting, and hopefully it would/will get the message out. The ads have started up again, but so far I have not seen as many of the variety of fruits and vegetables used in the ads last year. So I leave with you with the first ones I have seen in the train station this year. Click on the picture to enlarge.

I will be posting the cherry chocolate cake birthday cake soon.