I've been working almost exclusively with chocolate these past two weekends. Making chocolate cakes and treats has always been one of my goals. It surprises me that I haven't started working on chocolate sooner! Or maybe not, because of the Whole Wheat Brownies disaster previously...
The batter is best filled up to near the brim. They do puff up a lot.Since I wasn't keen on another chocolate disaster, I decided to try out a simple chocolate pound cake recipe. It was also an excuse to try out my new fancy baking pan that I bought for cheap from Living Well at the Podium. The pound cake is mostly made from whole wheat pastry flour (plus a bit of bread flour), straight from the King Arthur Whole Grain Baking Book. I followed the recipe to the letter the first time I tried it out, except that I slightly reduced the sugar (about 1/4 or 1/3 - I'm not sure anymore). I converted most of the units to grams, since I halved the original recipe and working with volume measurements was getting unwieldy. I wanted to use good quality Dutch Cocoa so I settled for using the Ghirardelli Sweet Chocolate one, so I had to adjust the sugar quantities too. I think it made a difference. I wish I could find some good quality Dutch-process cocoa soon. I find it strange that Dutche brand Dutch cocoa isn't dark at all!
Beautifully formed pound cakesThe cakes formed beautifully. I dusted powdered sugar on them, only to find out later that powdered sugar is best put immediately before serving since a few hours later, the powdered sugar absorbed some of the liquid and turned into an appetizing mess on the cakes. I don't know if it was also responsible for the much drier cake I ate just a few hours later. It was a disappointment because the cakes were wonderfully moist and chocolaty when they were fresh out of the oven. Somehow, the taste and texture changed after just a few hours!
The first batch was moist and soft and chocolaty a few hours after coming out of the oven.
I decided to rectify the dryness issue the 2nd time around (this weekend) by adding about 45g or nearly 1/4 cup of sour cream. The sour cream considerably changed the consistency of the cakes. They were much softer so the mold wasn't as well-defined. I brought some for Nyan on the same day and she said she couldn't taste the chocolate, and that they were too greasy. I really don't know why theses pound cakes quickly lose their chocolate flavor... :( They were really great about an hour from the oven. But they were indeed a bit greasy, since the next day, I tasted them and they did remain moist but had this grease-like film. Maybe I overdid it with the sour cream. I should probably only put in a couple of tablespoons next time.
Another breakthrough I had the 2nd time around was with creaming the butter and sugar. I still don't know if I indeed did it right, but this time, I used butter straight from the fridge and creamed with a hand mixer it until it was as fluffy as I thought it would go without falling apart. The butter did change color - it was lighter looking. The batter was also less fluid when I put it into the pans. I filled the pans near the brim and succeeded in filling the whole pan without any leftovers. Hooray! Half the recipe is just right.
I was going to declare this pound cake recipe a keeper, but the disappearing chocolate flavor is very disturbing. Maybe it's not the recipe's fault but rather the cocoa I'm using? I have to get hold of better cocoa (the Ghirardelli can is nearly empty, anyway). So for the meantime, I'm still on the lookout for another chocolate pound cake recipe.
Doubling the recipe makes 3 mini loaves. I put a lot of vanilla extract (1 1/2 tbsp) the first time, and I thought the vanilla flavor was slightly overpowering. So next time (for 2 loaves) I put in only 1 tbsp but this time I miss the vanilla flavor!
