dark and lovely
baking is generally considered to be both an art and a science; i am neither an artist nor a scientist. while i'm a competent and occasionally inventive cook, the mysterious alchemy of butter, flour, sugar, and heat leaves me a craftsman at best and an anxious, nervous, recipe-following drone at worst.
but even a blind hog finds an acorn every now and then:
(it'll be even prettier when i put the chocolate glaze on it tomorrow.)
thebroomecloset made this dark chocolate brown sugar pound cake for me several years ago for my birthday, and when we were considering options for his 40th, this one bubbled up to the top. i managed to remember some of the important parts, like having all the ingredients at room temperature and staging all the sift-this-into-that before starting the mixer... so despite the flour-and-cocoa-powder tornado i inadvertently created when i added the first half of the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar/egg mixture - even with the mixer on slow, it still helps to add powdery things gradually, rather than all-at-once! - it still turned out beautifully. and hey, i needed to wipe down every square inch of my mixer plus about a foot of that corner of the kitchen anyway...
but even a blind hog finds an acorn every now and then:
(it'll be even prettier when i put the chocolate glaze on it tomorrow.)
thebroomecloset made this dark chocolate brown sugar pound cake for me several years ago for my birthday, and when we were considering options for his 40th, this one bubbled up to the top. i managed to remember some of the important parts, like having all the ingredients at room temperature and staging all the sift-this-into-that before starting the mixer... so despite the flour-and-cocoa-powder tornado i inadvertently created when i added the first half of the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar/egg mixture - even with the mixer on slow, it still helps to add powdery things gradually, rather than all-at-once! - it still turned out beautifully. and hey, i needed to wipe down every square inch of my mixer plus about a foot of that corner of the kitchen anyway...