There's a long story about why this is called "Hundred Dollar Chocolate Cake", but the party I took them to was successful enough that I have a headache now, so I'm not going to type it here. It's similar to this legend about Neiman-Marcus's cookies.
What's more interesting for me, oddly enough, is that this is a WWII era recipe, using mayonnaise instead of eggs because eggs were being rationed. I've never actually tried the recipe with eggs and oil instead of mayo, but I have tried it with canola mayonnaise (vegan stuff without eggs in it) and it came out fine, so this is a recipe that can be veganized pretty easily
Let's see. The goal here was to produce cupcakes for a friend's holiday party. The cake recipe is pretty standard in my family, so I didn't change it much, in a "Why mess with success?" way. The frosting was kind of a trial run though.
Ingredients
Cake
2 c (cake) flour
1 c. (brown) sugar
1.5 tsp baking soda
4 T cocoa powder
1 c. cold water
1 c. mayonnaise (I used "light" because I don't eat the stuff and wanted to give the remainder to Daniel later on. It doesn't make a difference though.)
2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 T cinnamon[1]
Frosting
2.66 c. icing sugar (powdered sugar)
5 T margarine
1 t. vanilla
6 T rum (I recommend a fairly top-shelf rum, because you can taste it.)
Methodology
1. Preheat oven to 350*. Sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, and cocoa. If you're using brown sugar (as I was), bear in mind that it's rather difficult to force it through a strainer, so the best you're going to manage is probably to break up the lumps.
2. Beat in the water, mayonnaise, and vanilla. Drop about two tablespoon-fulls per muffin cup (a soup spoon "tablespoon", not a measuring spoon) and bake for 20-25 minutes. Cool.
3. Sift powdered sugar into bowl. Add margarine, vanilla, and rum. Mix into paste. Add more sugar and more rum until it reaches the desired consistency.
4. Frost cupcakes and add sprinkles, because who doesn't love sprinkles? Do not lick out the bowl and drive.
Notes
*Makes 18 cupcakes, approximately 80 calories each (frosted, approximately 130).
*As one of the people I forced cupcakes upon pointed out, these came out a little weird. The cake was good, the frosting was good, but they weren't really what people expected. Several people wanted to lick the frosting off and leave the cupcake (they didn't, though). But everyone seemed to enjoy them, including the people I was sort of pitifully trying to impress, and I was pretty intoxicated at that point anyway, so it was okay.
*If the liquor stores had been open when I baked the cookies (around 7h00, because of a 4.5 hour karate workshop taking up the middle chunk of my Saturday), I would have bought the rum and put some in the cupcakes, which might have made them go together better.
*So in total, 4.5/7 on the disaster index. It might be less if I didn't have a headache, but there you go.
[1]Cinnamon is my one addition to the recipe. Omit for a more standard cake.
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