Sorry for the typos. Typing with one hand is hard!

Linda! I know it! It's the best cake I make! I think you just convinced me to bake that onefor my cake thursday! I'm very interested to see how you likecoco loco! Ugh why does that cake have to taste so amazing!! Haha! Would making it denser help when imtrying to work with it?

Linda, sorry to hear you burnt your thumb
I think from reading other posts of yours that you weigh your ingredients. Would you mind posting the ingredients you used in weight form, for the Epicurious recipe you tried? Just the dry ingredients, the liquid ones I am ok to use cup measurements with. I am dying to try this.
Thankyou!

Skye, do you use a crusting BC when you ice frozen? I have found that I can't do it with a crusting BC.

Linda, mine never overflowed, the epicurious I mean.

Here are the dry measurement weights:

Sugar - 16.5 ounces
Flour - 11.25 ounces
cocoa - 5.25 ounces
Soda and powder I measure out by volume.

HTH.

Today it will be Coco Loco cake. And I decided that I just have to buy that book too.

Jae-
Yes, I use crusting BC almost exclusively

[quote="confectionsofahousewife"]

Yes I do. In the book How Baking Works by they show three cupcakes made with varying degrees of sugar - less than the weight of the flour, the same as the weight of the flour and more than the weight of the flour. The one with more than the weight of the flour is collapsed. It also explains how sugar is a tenderizer and it can tenderize too much if there is not enough structure built into the cake.

Now adding 2 more eggs might take care of the problem also because it is a structure builder and you are building structure. It may also help with the carving ability. I'm pretty sure you could both add 2 eggs and take out 1/2 cup sugar and you will get a delicious, carvable cake. If you try this, let me know. I'm not going to try it only because I don't need a carvable cake. Someday I might, but not now.

But with adding the semi-sweet melted chocolate you are adding more sugar. At least on the product I used it did. It had sugar as the first ingredient, which means there is more of that than any other ingredient. You might get around it by adding unsweetened melted chocolate. I don't know what that you do to the taste though. At 21 ounces of sugar that is 129% of the flour. Then with semi-sweet chocolate you are adding more sugar, but you have no idea how much more sugar you are adding to the recipe. So to be on the safe side I cut the sugar down to equal the weight of the flour/cocoa combo. With the added sugar in the chocolate it is still more than the flour/cocoa combo. And I can tell you that no one is saying it is not sweet enough. I sent a dozen with my DD today to her job and she said people are raving over them. I am about to take some over to my girlfriend's house. I'll ask her, but I doubt she will say they are not sweet enough.

If I don't get these out of my house and quick, I will eat them all. Plus I am making coco loco cupcakes today. I'm expecting a different taste just because this one has butter and oil. This should be interesting.

I did find that they did not raise as much as I expected. After everybody talked about overflow I thought this batter raised a lot. Instead I think there is some cases where too much batter is put in the pan. You get a lot of batter with this recipe - I mean a lot! I did 45 grams ( and got 43 cupcakes!) per cupcake and they did not rise above the paper. I'm going to try 55 grams and see what I get. Even at 55 grams I should get about 36 cupcakes. This is a lot of batter than the recipes I usually do that I get around 22 cupcakes. I think this recipe fills more than 2 - 10" pans.

Good luck and keep us posted on what you do to the recipe to get it to carve well. I will say I can see carving this more than Skye's recipe. That one was super moist, almost wet. For my purpose I like the epicurious recipe so far.

And always, I forgot to mention one other thing.

The amount of sugar that a recipe can hold without collapsing will depend on your fat. The more fat, the more sugar you can hold.

Also hi-ratio shortening or oil will hold more sugar in a recipe than butter or regular oil. This recipe has little fat compared to the flour, so that is the other reason why I reduced the sugar.

Still at 16.25 ounces that is still a pound of sugar. A pound of sugar is a huge amount of sugar. 21 ounces just seems like over kill.

And something is wrong with CC. I am not getting informed of any more posts to any topic, even though I have request it. If I don't get back to you right away, it is because of that reason. Sorry.

Suzi-

About the coco loco recipe. Is the one you posted the one with your revisions? I managed to get my hands on a book to see it and the recipe in there is different. It has only 3/4 cup coffee, 5 ounces of unsweetened chocolate and no oil.

thanks.

Linda,
I have the book with me....you scared me with the coffee measurement. I thought here come the mob of angry CCers because I miss typed my recipe. The coffee is correct at 1 3/4 C but I have made changes and that was to the chocolate part of the recipe. I love black cocoa. So when I bake, if a recipe calls for real chocolate (unsweetened bars) I do the subtitution that I had learned some where of cocoa and oil to REPLACE the chocolate (I use 3/4 of what ever the cocoa measurement is and use dutch processed cocoa and then 1/4 of the measurement as black cocoa). Not to mention I like having a little oil in my recipes even when I have butter. I tend to like it better that way for taste, texture and moisture.
Hope I have not confused you. But just to clarify, the recipe I posted is Colettes but with my minor changes. The recipe is correct as posted for how I make it.
Suzi

I just baked Epicurious chocolate cake and it is awesome! I filled two 10in pans and they ended up being an inch and a half tall. No sunken middle in mine, they came out level....amazing! The taste is terrific as well and that's because I tried it without the ganache but I will be putting that on right now and see what my family thinks of it. Thanks for posting this!

Coco loco cupcakes have just come out of the oven. They look beautiful. The batter was slightly, and I mean slightly thicker than epicurious recipe. They rose higher than the epicurious recipe.

I would say if you want a nice flat cupcake, use the epicurious recipe. If you want a domed cupcake, use the coco loco recipe.

I used unsweetened chocolate, eliminated the oil and did 2 cups of coffee instead of the bourbon.

It is going to be hard to wait till they cool to try them. I'll report back on taste later.

Okay - we did a taste test. There is a dead heat tie between the two. They are both rich in chocolate and moistness.

In the book Cakes To Dream On Colette says that the coco loco cake is great for carving, especially the next day. So Confectionsofahousewife I would saynthat you could use the coco loco cake and get a good cake for carving with just as good taste and moistness.

I have two new chocolate cake recipes that are awesome.

Thanks for sharing these recipes. This has been fun.

Thanks Linda! I can't wait to try the revisions we talked about to the epicurious recipe and the coco loco recipe. Awesome!

I made the epicurious yesterday ( I was having a bad day anyway) but it failed! The toothpick came out clean but then the cake was disgustingly mushy on the inside! I must have fudged up the recipe in my haste! Lol so the coco loco is next on my list as well! I'm excited about it! Thanks for testing for us Linda!

Linda,
I am so glad that you liked the recipe! I knew the first time that I made it that it was a keeper! Do not however shy away from the borboun (unless you do it for health reasons) as it adds an additional flavor dimension. I actually use only an 1/8 of a cup and the rest sub with water just to get that little extra but not too much. I personally do not think it taste like alcohol AT ALL when I do that. It is just super yummy and my kids even love it (I assume that the alcohol is being baked out).

I will now try this in the cupcake form (did you have the amount of batter used for cupcakes as you did in your previous trials?) thanks for all of the great info!!
Suzi

Hi Suzi,
I didn't do the bourbon because I didn't have any on hand. I'll try it with that next time. I have made chocolate cake with Brandy and it does add a layer of flavor especially the next day. Not everybody likes that flavor though as I have found out. But I like your idea of 1/8 cup or 2Tablespoons in case you don't have a 1/8 cup measure.

I saw that you have a business. I'm surprised that you haven't tried these as cupcakes already. You should definitely make them into cupcakes. I used 60 grams or 2/3 full. And you don't have to use a mixer. Although I think if you double the recipe that a mixer with a whisk attachment and using a slow speed will help to not kill your mixing arm.

Let us know if you try this as cupcakes. I would be curious to see if you get the same results.

BTW - Bucks County is that near Hershey?

Hey again Linda!
I am actually about an hour and 45 min from Hershey. As far as my business, I had set out to do that awhile back. When the economy took a header I got scared and thought this is just not the right time. So I had everything in place but am not activley operating or taking any business just doing stuff for friends and family to keep up practice. Besides birthdays I am doing my cousins bridal shower and wedding. I am nervous about that because of the size but it should be fun (the wedding is cupcakes and cake truffles with a small cutting cake).

I just left my site up and hanging there because it was already paid for for 3 years.

We are also about to build a new home (also a scary thing to be doing right now but we own the land) so on that note I am thinking that I may change all plans from a store front to an in home baker as PA allows that. Financially, It will be easier as I still have all of my equipment to set up a seperate kitchen. I will decide all of that as the building proceeds to make sure that we can afford even to do that.

Anyways, It has been great going back and forth sharing info and recipes. Keep me posted if you decide test other recipes as I still struggle with a favorite vanilla, white and yellow. I have recipes that I really like but I just keep thinking there is something better out there. I write notes all over my recipes saying how good, texture and so on but have yet to do a side by side comparison as you have, which is probably what I should do in order to cut back on all of the recipes and finally just stick with one for each!
Happy Baking!
PS - I actually had a favorite chocolate cupcake recipe (it was eggless if you can believe that) that tasted really good but even looked better as it would dome perfectly without any persuasion from oven temp changes. I loved it but I may have to make a change and condense my many recipes by one!
SORRY FOR THE RUN ON!!!

Hi Suzi -
I ask because my son, wife and GD live outside of Hershey in a small town - Jonestown. We go there about once a month when the weather is nice. I can't remember how far out of town that is from Hershey. My DIL used to work at Hershey medical center and now works at a smaller hospital. My son is working at Starbuck in Hershey outlet. His degree is in communications and he would really love to do something in that field, but it is hard to find in that area.

So no cake decorating store around there huh?

Good luck with the house. You have lots going on. Your site is pretty. I like your layout. I'll let you know when I'm ready to test again.

If you are still looking for a chocolate cake check out the Hersheys pefectly chocolate chocolate cake substituting strong brewed coffee for the water and buttermilk for the milk. There is a thread on here that I stared "you may have a convert here". I used to only use box mixes and am now hooked on scratch baking due to this cake. It is amazing.

I'm going to make the coco loco cake tomorrow!

Linda, if I have only semisweet chocolate could I still use it or should I just sub cocoa like Suzy does? I love melted chocolate but I don't have any unsweetened on hand.

I was going to try the coco loco cake with semi-sweet. But this depends on which kind you have. I have two different ones and I noticed on the ghirardelli one that Sugar is the first ingredient where it is the second ingredient on the other one.

This recipe has a high percentage of sugar to flour. It is hard to tell how much to reduce the sugar because we don't know how much sugar is in the chocolate. But I would at least reduce the sugar to 1.75 cups if using semi-sweet.

Let us know how it works for you.

I was just going to use bakers chocolate the first ingredient is chocolate second is sugar.

Suzi, does this recipe make enough for your two to three inch pans? Do you think I could get 4 layers out of it so I don't have to torte 2 2 inch?

I saw a reference here to a really fudgey chocolate cake, and have gone through all the pages, but can't find the recipe! Can anyone direct me to the really chocolately, fudgey cake recipe?????? Oh, I'm drooling just thinking about it...........

KayMC, go to epicurious.com and search for the double chocolate layer cake!

I'll post a link but idk if it will get blocked. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Double-Chocolate-Layer-Cake-101275