Deep, Dark Chocolate Cake

My son is obsessed with the solar system right now. So for his 4th birthday I made him a solar system cake, complete with black frosting. To go with that, I made this deep, dark chocolate cake from a recipe that I found in Bake Wise by Shirley O. Corriher. I never noticed a single speck of crumb make it into the frosting. It was nice and moist too. I modified it slightly to make it a tiny bit healthier and more suited to its task as a birthday cake.

Deep, Dark Chocolate* Cake

Nonstick cooking spray and parchment paper, cut to fit pan
2 3/4 cups sugar
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup Dutch process cocoa powder (all they sell around here is "natural"cocoa powder)
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup water
1cup canola oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (I used 1 cup cake flour and 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour, next time I'll increase the amount of whole wheat and decrease the cake flour and see if it works)
4 large egg yolks
2 large eggs (I omitted the egg yolks and used a total of 4 large eggs. If you want it more dense and moist, stick with the yolks. I thought it was still plenty moist and may have held up better to the decorating.)
1/4 cup buttermilk (soured milk for me)

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Place baking stone in center of oven if you have one.
2. Generously spray cake pan(s). Line the bottom of the pan(s) with parchment paper that has been cut to size. Spray top of parchment paper.
3. In a heavy saucepan, stir together the sugar, salt, cocoa, and baking soda. In another pan, heat water to boiling. Stirring constantly, pour boiling water a little at a time into cocoa mixture, mixing well. Place on heat and bring back to a boil. Turn off heat and allow to stand in pan for at least 10 minutes.
4. Pour cocoa mixture into a mixing bowl. Add the oil and vanilla and beat on low for 10 seconds. On low speed, beat in the flour and then, with minimum of beating, beat in the yolks, eggs, and buttermilk.
 5. Pour batter into prepared pan(s). Place in oven on the stone and bake until the center feels springy to the touch, about 25 minutes for round layers or 35 minutes for a 9x13 sheet cake. Allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes on a rack. Run a thin knife around the edge and jar the edge of the pan to loosen. Invert onto the serving platter. Cool completely before icing. (I like to freeze it to make it even easier to de-crumb and frost.)

From here you can go many places. I did a more traditional decorating job on it. You can layer it with ganache, nuts, berries, cream, or whatever you like for a more grown-up version.

*Note that "dark chocolate" here does not refer to your typical antioxidant-rich dark chocolate. Here we are talking about alkalizing (raising pH with baking soda) the cocoa to darken its color for purely cosmetic reasons. This process actually decreases the nutrition of the cocoa somewhat :-(  So if you want a chocolate cake that's even a little bit better for you, I'd look for a different recipe. Or if you're like me and after a point you say to yourself, "It's cake for crying out loud!" then just enjoy it as it is and save the real dark chocolate for another night. After all, how often do I actually eat cake? (Answer: birthdays, so maybe once every couple of months.)

Rosemary