Pink Chocolate Cake - I can pipe!!!

My daughter finished first grade as third highest in class! Of course, proud mama will prepare food for the little girl :-)

By special demand, er, request, my baby girl wants chocolate cake with pink icing. Very Barbie-ish!

I tried making this chocolate cake before and it was a success! The recipe though is for a very thin cake (almost just a quarter of the pan height). I doubled the recipe and poured everything in just one 9" pan. This is a very easy recipe that you won't even need a hand mixer to prepare this. The cake is moist and rich that you would need just light frosting.

The recipe in the Martha Stewart website includes a ganache frosting. I didn't use that for this one as the goal is for pink, fluffy frosting. I didn't use vegetable oil cooking spray as well and followed one of the suggestions from the comments to just grease and flour the baking pan. I also used parchment paper on the bottom of the pan so I can easily remove the cake once done. This worked well :-)

Vegetable-oil cooking spray
1 cup warm water
1/2 cup unsweetened natural cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sunflower oil
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
2 teaspoons distilled white vinegar

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Coat an 8-inch round cake pan with spray.
2. Whisk water and cocoa in a small bowl until smooth. Combine flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl, and make a well in center. Add cocoa mixture, oil, and vanilla. Whisk until smooth. Whisk in vinegar. Pour into pan.
3. Bake until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack for 20 minutes. Run a knife around edge of cake, invert it onto rack, and turn cake right side up. Let cool completely. Transfer cake to a serving plate or a cake stand.

This is the cake after it was cooled. The dome is very shiny and sticky (I baked this 2 days before the celebration day and stored it in the fridge). See the parchment paper on the sides? That's a trick I learned from the Martha Stewart and the Betty Crocker websites. Always put strips of parchment paper at the bottom sides of your cake so your frosting won't end up on your cake board or cake stand and you'd have to clean up the mess after frosting. Very handy tip!

I've leveled the cake using Wilton's cake leveler.

Since this cake is already rich and moist, I decided to use this frosting recipe from Can You Stay for Dinner?

The Best Whipped Frosting
(makes enough to frost a 9″ layer cake or one dozen cupcakes generously)

Recipe adapted from Missy Dew on TastyKitchen

1 cup milk
5 tablespoons flour
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup butter, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar (not powdered sugar)

1. In a medium saucepan, whisk one cup of milk with 5 tablespoons of flour. Heat over medium until the mixture begins to sputter, whisking constantly. Continue to stir as the mixture thickens. You will know it’s done when it reaches the consistency of thick cake batter, after about 7 minutes of heating and whisking. Stir in 2 teaspoons vanilla extract and set aside to cool COMPLETELY.
2. Now, in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, or using a hand held mixer, beat 2 sticks of softened butter (1 cup) with 1 cup of granulated sugar until light, fluffy, and white in color, about 3 solid minutes of beating on medium-high speed. You want the sugar to be totally incorporated into the butter.
3. Be sure that the milk/flour mixture has completely cooled, and add it to the butter/sugar mixture. Beat all ingredients for about 1 minute on high speed, scraping down the bowl halfway, until they are smooth and well blended. The frosting should be as light and fluffy as whipped cream.

Mixing the cooled flour-milk mixture with the creamed butter and sugar.

Whip it good!

Colored the frosting using AmeriColor fuchsia pink, piped florets on the sides as well as on the bottom edge of the cake. I used the icing gel writers (brown and sparkle blue, both from Wilton) to write the greeting. Saw some gold dragees and used these on the border of the florets. Finally sprinkled star sprinkles on my daughter's name and on the sides of the cake.
Finished product :-)

I was actually surprised with myself that I can now pipe icing!!! Yipee!!! I tried SO MANY times and failed every single time! The results were a messy combination of droopy florets with awkward tips. I don't know what came over me when I was making this cake (must be the frosting recipe!) but I was able to make these perky florets! I used a disposable piping bag and a medium sized star tip. Voila!

Pawis rating: Unbelievably, incredibly 2 of 5 - very easy!