chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream

in

we* made a stop motion video about the most important time of day: cake o'clock!! 

i partnered with android to demonstrate a quick easy way of decorating a string-light-inspired holiday cake (with marzipan, of course, duhhh) for their #magicminute project. because even if you're running late for cake o'clock, you still deserve festive tasty decorations. enjoy this stop motion (turn the sound on!), bop your head along, and stick around for the bloopers at the end!! below is the cake and frosting recipe that i used for it. it's my basic go-to rich chocolate cake and fluffy vanilla buttercream.  

*video credits:

indoor photography -- eggboy and me

outdoor photography -- chantell and brett

eggboy -- as himself

macaroni -- as themselves

sven and ole cat -- as their extra mischievous selves

ole handler -- eggboy

chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream

makes one 2-layer 8-inch cake

ingredients

for the cake:

1 3/4 c sugar

1 3/4 c flour

1 c unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/2 tsp kosher salt

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

2 large eggs

1 c buttermilk

1 tb vanilla extract

1/2 c flavorless oil

3/4 c boiling water

for the frosting:

1 1/2 c unsalted butter

2 c powdered sugar

1/8 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tb whole milk

clues

for the cake:

preheat the oven to 350ºf. grease and line the bottoms of two 8-inch cake pans with parchment paper.

in a large bowl, whisk together the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and baking soda. in a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, buttermilk, vanilla, and oil. add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir to combine. whisk in the boiling water.

pour the batter into the cake pans and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. begin checking for doneness at 28 minutes. let cool in the pans for 10 minutes and then remove to a rack to cool completely.

for the frosting: 

use an electric mixer to beat together the butter, powdered sugar, salt, vanilla, and milk. 

level the cakes and frost as desired. enjoy!

-yeh!

thank you android for sponsoring this video! 

rhubarb linzer cookies

in

eggboy and i are heading to the white house today!!! i am so giddy. i brought a lot of outfit options. i’m not sure what to expect, all i know is that we will spend time this afternoon with the white house chef and pastry chef, making gingerbread houses, mac and cheese (!!!), other festive goodies. joy and ashley will be there too!! and we’re all crossing our fingers and toes that an obama will swing by (and i am *praying* that i don’t toss my cookies in their presence). do you think the obamas make gingerbread houses?? do you think they’ve had gingerbread catastrophes too, where they had to resort to hot glue and cardboard walls to avoid any frustration induced tantrums? maybe i can show them how to make a gingerbread oval?

i am just so excited to see the white house, especially around the holidays. the strongest reference i have to it comes from house of cards and veep because i never went on my school trip to d.c. and when i spent a summer outside of d.c. in college, i spent all of my free time at georgetown cupcake. i know. it was at the heigh of my gossip girl phase, ok?

so this is all to say that eggboy and i have a jam packed morning of zipping around the smithsonian, the washington monument, that huge statue of lincoln, and as many other historical things we can find, before heading over to the big house. follow along on instagram stories!!

over the weekend, i had such a fun #mollyontherange event in grand forks! i would have had a local event earlier in the tour, but since launch date was right around the beginning of beet harvest, we held off. it was so gosh darn lovely, everyone was so so sweet, it made me love grand forks even more. i obvi couldn’t show up empty handed, so i brought this flower cake (which in typical grand forks fashion was gobbled up *except* for the flower part because people were too polite to cut into it), and these dala horse rhubarb linzer cookies because i felt like they really reflected our area. 

until i moved here, i only kind of knew the dala horse as the cake pan from ikea! but when i got here and started seeing him around town in non-ikea situations, i learned how traditional of a symbol it is in scandinavian culture. (i wish i remember where i got my little horse cookie cutter, his name is bojack, but i’m assuming it was at our town scandinavian shop.) i also learned that you’re an extra good upper midwesterner if you have a freezer full of rhubarb at all times of the year, or that even if you don’t you can get rhubarb jam at almost all of our local grocery stores. or you probably know someone who has a stash. so rhubarb is plentiful, its tartness is beautiful when smooshed between two sugary cookies, and when paired with a dala horsey, you’ve got a good grand forks cookie! 

and this is part of bob’s red mill united states of cookies campaign!! check out their cool microsite to take a look at cookies from all of the other states. this is such a tasty diverse project. my cookies use their unbleached all-purpose flour, which is extra appropriate in this case since the sugar cookie dough here is a nice all-purpose dough. you don’t have to use it for linzers, you can use it for cutouts, uh-oh oreos, cookie trees, or even mini cookie houses. it will hold its shape when you bake it and it won’t spread that much at all because there aren’t any leavening agents. this yields a slightly crispier cookie, but when sandwiched with jam or buttercream, i think it’s jussst right. 

rhubarb linzer cookies

makes 15-18

ingredients

1 c unsalted butter, softened

1 c sugar

3/4 tsp kosher salt

1 large egg

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp almond extract

3 c all-purpose flour

about 10 tb rhubarb jam (homemade or store bought)

powdered sugar, for dusting

clues

preheat the oven to 350ºf and line two cookie sheets with parchment.

in the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter, sugar, and salt until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. beat in the egg and extracts. gradually mix in the flour until combined.

turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. (alternatively you can wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for up to 2 days before proceeding to the next step.) roll out the dough until it's 1/4-inch thick. cut out 3-inch circles using a cookie or biscuit cutter. place half of the cookies on the baking sheet 1 inch apart. use a smaller cookie cutter to cut out a shape from the center of the remaining cookies. place those on the cookie sheet 1 inch apart (you may have to bake in batches).

bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges of the cookies turn slightly golden. remove the cookies from the oven and cool on a wire rack.

once cooled, place about 2 tsp of jam in the center of a cookie and then squish into a sandwich with one of the cutout cookies. repeat with remaining cookies and then let set overnight.

dust with powdered sugar before serving and enjoy!

-yeh!

Thanks to bob's red mill for sponsoring this post!

their unbleached all-purpose flour is a great versatile kitchen staple. get more recipes by visiting the united states of cookies! also get a coupon for some bob's red mill flours here.

classic yellow cake with chocolate frosting

in

eggboy is 30 today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yayayayy!!! we celebrated the other night with eggpop (whose birthday was yesterday) and the whole eggfamily and ate big bowls of goulash, tara's roasted carrots, and a citrus fennel salad. eggboy and eggpop both received antique books on sugar beets that i found at omnivore last month, and eggboy's gettin a little birthday trip in the new year to hawaii! and then we had cake, of course. eggboy's favorite cake is a classic yellow cake with chocolate frosting--he loves it so much that he made *me* one for my birthday this year--so i took the hint. i used sarah's recipe from her new book, vanilla bean baking book, and it was solid gold. (i wouldn't have expected anything less though because everything i've made from her blog and every recipe test she fed me over the last year was fantastic. my mom has this fear of making new recipes for the first time for special occasions because what if it doesn't turn out? but i've learned that i can trust sarah's recipes to come out amazingly every time and if you like baking and want a book full of reliable amazing beautiful recipes, you need her book, 100%).

so we had cake for breakfast! and listened to the beatles. and then ate muhammara and drove to fargo for the annual sugar beet farmers meeting (partayyyy)! and that's where we are now. we're getting ready to party with all of our farmer friends tonight but first we have to go to barnes and noble for more eggboy birthday books. the barnes and noble is a must-stop in fargo (aka the big city). 

yay!

p.s. i have a few #mollyontherange events coming up: fargo, grand forks, and d.c.! just when i thought i was going to stay put for a few weeks, the d.c. trip came up but i could not be more excited! see you guys there :) details this way. 

classic yellow cake with chocolate frosting

Recipe by Sarah Kieffer

Eggboy's favorite birthday cake, yellow cake with chocolate frosting from Sarah Kieffer's the vanilla bean baking book

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 22 minutes

Total time: 45 minutes

Yield: 1 2-tiered 8-inch cake

Ingredients

  • 3 large eggs
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 1 tb pure vanilla extract
  • 3/4 c sour cream
  • 1/4 c buttermilk
  • 2 c (284 g) all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 c (297 g) sugar
  • 3/4 tsp baking powder
  • 3/4 tsp baking soda
  • 3/4 tsp salt
  • 1/2 lb (2 sticks; 227 g) unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into 1-inch pieces
  • 8 ounces (226 g) bittersweet chocolate, chopped
  • 3/4 lb (3 sticks; 339 g) unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
  • 3 tb corn syrup
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 2 c (226 g) confectioners' sugar

Cooking Directions

  1. for the cake:
  2. adjust an oven rack to the middle position. preheat the oven to 350ºf. butter and flour two 8 by 2-inch round cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper.
  3. in a medium bowl or liquid measuring cup, whisk the eggs, egg yolks, vanilla, sour cream, and buttermilk.
  4. in a bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt on low until combined. with the mixer running on low, add the butter one piece at a time, beating until the mixture resembles coarse sand. with the mixer still running on low, slowly add half the wet ingredients. increase the speed to medium and beat until incorporated, about 30 seconds. with the mixer running on low, add the rest of the wet ingredients, mixing until just combined. increase the speed to medium and beat for 20 seconds (the batter may still look a little bumpy). scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, and use a spatula to mix the batter a few more times.
  5. divide the batter between the prepared pans and smooth the tops. tap the pans gently on the counter 2 times each to help get rid of any bubbles. bake 17 to 22 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through, until the cakes are golden brown and pull slightly away from the sides and a wooden skewer or toothpick inserted in the centers comes out clean.
  6. transfer the pans to a wire rack and let cool for 30 minutes. turn the cakes out onto the rack, remove the parchment paper, and let cool completely. once cool, the cakes can be wrapped in plastic and refrigerated overnight or frosted.
  7. for the frsoting:
  8. put about 1 inch or water in a medium saucepan and bring it to a gentle boil.
  9. melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over the pan of boiling water, being careful not to let the water touch the bottom of the bowl. stir constantly until just melted and set aside to cool slightly.
  10. in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, beat the butter on medium until light yellow and fluffy, about 3 minutes. add the vanilla, corn syrup, and salt and beat on medium until combined. turn the mixer to low and gradually add the confectioner's sugar. beat at medium, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl as necessary, until smooth and creamy, 2 to 3 minutes. add the chocolate and mix on low speed until no streaks remain.
  11. layer and frost the cake. enjoy!

classic yellow cake with chocolate frosting

from sarah kieffer's the vanilla bean baking book

makes one 2-layer 8-inch cake

ingredients

for the cake:

3 large eggs

2 egg yolks

1 tb pure vanilla extract

3/4 c sour cream

1/4 c buttermilk

2 c (284 g) all-purpose flour

1 1/2 c (297 g) sugar

3/4 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 lb (2 sticks; 227 g) unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into 1-inch pieces

for the frosting:

8 ounces (226 g) bittersweet chocolate, chopped

3/4 lb (3 sticks; 339 g) unsalted butter, room temperature

2 tsp pure vanilla extract

3 tb corn syrup

1/4 tsp salt

2 c (226 g) confectioners' sugar

clues

for the cake:

adjust an oven rack to the middle position. preheat the oven to 350ºf. butter and flour two 8 by 2-inch round cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper.

in a medium bowl or liquid measuring cup, whisk the eggs, egg yolks, vanilla, sour cream, and buttermilk.

in a bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt on low until combined. with the mixer running on low, add the butter one piece at a time, beating until the mixture resembles coarse sand. with the mixer still running on low, slowly add half the wet ingredients. increase the speed to medium and beat until incorporated, about 30 seconds. with the mixer running on low, add the rest of the wet ingredients, mixing until just combined. increase the speed to medium and beat for 20 seconds (the batter may still look a little bumpy). scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, and use a spatula to mix the batter a few more times.

divide the batter between the prepared pans and smooth the tops. tap the pans gently on the counter 2 times each to help get rid of any bubbles. bake 17 to 22 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through, until the cakes are golden brown and pull slightly away from the sides and a wooden skewer or toothpick inserted in the centers comes out clean.

transfer the pans to a wire rack and let cool for 30 minutes. turn the cakes out onto the rack, remove the parchment paper, and let cool completely. once cool, the cakes can be wrapped in plastic and refrigerated overnight or frosted.

for the frosting:

put about 1 inch or water in a medium saucepan and bring it to a gentle boil.

melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over the pan of boiling water, being careful not to let the water touch the bottom of the bowl. stir constantly until just melted and set aside to cool slightly.

in  the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, beat the butter on medium until light yellow and fluffy, about 3 minutes. add the vanilla, corn syrup, and salt and beat on medium until combined. turn the mixer to low and gradually add the confectioner's sugar. beat at medium, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl as necessary, until smooth and creamy, 2 to 3 minutes. add the chocolate and mix on low speed until no streaks remain.

layer and frost the cake. enjoy!

-yeh!

shallot mujadara with herby yogurt and almonds

in

i hope everybody had a glorious thanksgiving that was filled with pumpkin, gilmore girls, stretchy pants, enough leftovers to make a day-after-thanksgiving sandwich, and lots of niece/nephew puppies. eggboy and i are back from chicago and ready to hunker down for the winter! i have no traveling lined up for this entire month and ooh baby, i am going to clean. i have an exploding prop room, a closet with as many clothes on the floor as there are falling off hangers, and a pantry that has... ugh, i don't even want to know what it has. 

i'm not going to leave the house unless i absolutely have to. so get me a bulk bag of lentils and call me sia. 

did i ever tell you about the time when eggboy insisted that we buy the bulk lentils from costco? this was back when i lived in brooklyn. we were going through this phase where we ate deb's lentil soup with sausage and chard almost every other day so upon our very first visit to costco as a couple eggboy thought it would be cute and hilarious if we got the ginormous, dog-food-sized bag of lentils. we hauled it back, leaving a trail of dried lentils all the way to and from the subway, and then got to work making soup. in three days we were sick of them and never wanted to see another lentil ever again for as long as we lived.

(they're probably still in that apartment. (old roommate patrick, are those lentils still there?))

but then!

i tried mujadara for the first time and all bets were off. my eyes rolled to the back of my head and i was like ermagerrrddd i loooove mujadaraaaaa. it's rice, lentils, **tonnnnns** of crispy fried onions, and all of the cold weather spices that you want right now, such as cinnamon and cumin and allspice. it's so comforting. it kind of has the appearance of a side dish, but when you think about how it's got lots of lentils, you'll realize that you can totally get away with making this a casual main. yogurt and a sprinkle of toasted almonds add more protein, and fresh herbs and lemon add a nice pop of brightness. and my version is made with shallots since over the summer our garden yielded shallots galore. 

and my love of mujadara came just in time for the end of the year of pulses. have you been keeping up with your pulses this year?? i have. and not just because they present an easy way of keeping protein on hand at all times, reducing my need to put on pants and go to the grocery store. i've discovered so many great new ways to use beans, dry peas, and lentils, and i hope you have too! 

shallot mujadara with herby yogurt and almonds

serves 6-8

ingredients

1 c brown or green lentils, rinsed

2 cloves garlic, halved

1/4 c canola or good olive oil

12 shallots (or more, mo' shallots mo' better)

1 tb cumin seeds

1 tb coriander seeds

2 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp allspice

pepper

a dash of nutmeg

1 1/2 c basmati rice

kosher salt

for the herby yogurt:

1 c yogurt

1/2 c herbs (mix of cilantro, parsley, mint), finely chopped, plus more for garnish

juice from 1/2 lemon

2 cloves garlic, minced

Kosher salt and pepper

for serving:

sumac

1/2 cup slivered almonds, toasted

clues

in a medium saucepan, cook the lentils in 3 cups of water with 2 cloves of garlic for 15 minutes, until tender. remove the garlic cloves, drain and set aside.

heat the oil over medium high heat, fry 1/2 of the shallots until crispy and remove to a paper towel lined plate. sprinkle with salt. reduce heat to medium and add the remaining shallots. cook, stirring until golden. add the spices and cook for 2 more minutes. add the rice and 1 tsp salt,  and toast, stirring, for 2 minutes. add 2 1/4 cups water and lentils and bring to a boil. reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook for 25 minutes or until all liquid is absorbed. 

to make the herby yogurt, combine the yogurt, herbs, lemon, garlic, a pinch of salt and a few turns of pepper.

transfer the rice to a serving platter, top with the fried shallots, herbs, sumac, and almonds. serve with yogurt. enjoy!

-yeh!

 

this post was sponsored by usa pulses & pulse canada! hooray for 2016 being the international year of the pulse! pulses are good for the health as well as the environment, so all year long (and beyond!), eggboy and i will be challenging ourselves to eat pulses at least once a week and throughout the year i’ll be sharing recipes for all sorts of pulses. if you’d like to join in on the fun, head over to pulsepledge.com and take the pulse pledge with us!!