No matter how you bake and slice it, this classic yellow cake with fudgy chocolate ganache is a show-stopper cake with homemade goodness and elegance, a particularly apt dessert to serve at holiday dinners. I brought it to the Thanksgiving feast I attended along with pumpkin and pecan pies. Those were hardly touched by the 12 guests who instead made a beeline for the cake.
Yellow cake with chocolate ganache
Standing four layers high it holds a kitchen sink of ingredients: both cake and all-purpose flours, butter, oil (which gives great moistness to cakes), buttermilk, whole eggs and egg yolks (for deep yellow color), sugar, vanilla extract and softly whipped heavy cream that’s folded into the batter at the end. It’s iced with a fudge frosting, which is basically a ganache made with semi-sweet chocolate, heavy cream and dark-brown sugar. Instead of chopping the chocolate use chocolate chips. I used Guittard. (Sold at Whole Foods.)
Four downy soft yellow cake layers
I found the recipe several years ago in a cookbook called “Vintage Cakes” by Julie Richardson, a Portland, Oregon, baker who owns two bake shops there, The Cakery and Baker and Spice. Now in the “other” Portland, you can add this quintessential yellow layer cake to your baking repertoire.
The cake is not particularly difficult to make, though I offer some guidance in preparing it. Two 8-inch layers are each cut in half horizontally so that you have essentially a 4-layer cake with the rich chocolate ganache between the layers.
Sift the flours before measuring. If you have a kitchen scale use that to measure instead of fiddling with measuring cups. I give both measurements.
Bring the butter, buttermilk and eggs to room temperature before using.
It’s best to frost the cake on a revolving cake stand, which enables you to frost the cake uniformly. It’s available at Leroux Kitchen.
Prepare the frosting after the cake pans have come out of the oven to cool. The frosting will need about an hour of cooling time to reach the right consistency. You can keep the finished cake on the counter in a cake stand with cover if you’re planning to serve it right away or it will stay in an airtight container on the counter for several days. Otherwise refrigerate for storage.
The quality of your ingredients will make this cake a real winner. We’re fortunate to have the best local ingredients in our reach to use in baking, and I also think these helped make this cake so good: local buttermilk (Balfour Farm, Smiling Hill or Swallowtail Farm), heavy cream (Misty Brook, Harris Farm, sold at The Farm Stand in South Portland; Smiling Hill or Bisson’s in Topsham) and sweet butter. We have lots of New England butters available. I recommend these: Maine Country Butter (sold at Whole Foods), Bisson’s raw-cream butter, Land O Lakes European style butter (sold at Shaw’s) and Vermont Creamery are all available locally. Even the flour was locally sourced–King Arthur (Vermont) cake flour and all-purpose.
Ingredients
- 1 1/3 cups (5 1/3 ounces) sifted cake flour, weighed after sifting
- 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (4 ounces) sifted all-purpose flour, weighed after sifting
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 6 tablespoons (3 ounces) butter, at room temperature
- 2 cups (14 ounces) sugar
- 1/2 cup canola oil
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 4 egg yolks, at room temperature
- 3 whole eggs, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup heavy cream, cold
- Frosting
- 1 pound semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 1/2 cup (3 3/4 ounces) dark-brown sugar, packed (if measuring in cups)
- Mix the chocolate chips into a medium size heat resistance mixing bowl. Set aside.
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare two 8-inch round cake pans, greasing with softened butter and covering the bottoms with rounds of parchment paper to fit.
- Prepare the flour by scooping out an estimate of the flour you need, put each through the sifter and then with a bench scraper gather it up to fit into the measuring cups. If you use weight measures you’ll need 5 1/3 ounces sifted cake flour and 4 ounces all-purpose (weighed after sifting). Then put both flours, baking powder and salt through a sifter into a large bowl. Once assembled whisk the flour mixture to distribute the dry ingredients evenly. Set aside.
- In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment cream the butter and sugar together at medium high speed until fluffy, about 5 minutes, scraping down the side of the bowl frequently with a rubber spatula.
- With the mixer on low speed drizzle in the oil and vanilla extract into the mixture until well combined. Blend in the egg yolks and whole eggs, one at a time, at medium low speed until each is thoroughly incorporated.
- With the mixer on low speed add the flour in three parts alternating with the buttermilk in two parts, beginning and ending with flour. After each addition mix until barely blended and stop to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Stop the mixer before the last of the flour has been incorporated and complete the blending by hand, using a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to ensure that you don’t overbeat the batter. Or you can continue to beat on the lowest speed of the mixer until blended.
- Using chilled beaters and chilled bowl, beat the heavy cream to soft peaks, using a hand whisk (or hand-held electric beater). Fold the cream into the batter.
- Divide the batter equally between your two pans; there will be approximately 1 pound 6 ounces per pan. Smooth the top. Tap the pans lightly on the counter to knock out any large air bubbles.
- Bake in the middle of the oven until the cakes crack a bit on top and the centers spring back when lightly touched or about 35 to 40 minutes. Cool the cakes in their pans on a wire rack for 30 minutes. Flip the cakes out of the pans, leaving on the parchment paper until you assemble the cake. Let the cakes cool, top side up, to room temperature before frosting.
- To assemble, cut each layer in half horizontally to create four layers. Put the first layer, cut side up, on a flat plate or cake stand. Top with about 1/2 cup frosting, spreading out to the edge. Put the next layer on top of this, cut side up, spreading with the same amount of frosting. Affix the third layer, cut side up, spreading the frosting as before. Finally put the fourth layer on top, cut side down. Spread an initial amount of frosting on the top of the cake and then lightly coat the sides with frosting, using an offset spatula. Refrigerate for about 5 to 10 minutes. Then finish frosting the sides of the cake using heavier amounts of frosting over the coating and adding more frosting to the top of the cake as desired.
- In an airtight container or domed cake stand the cake can stay for 3 days on the counter, covering cut portions with plastic wrap so the cake layers remain moist.
- Frosting. Combine the heavy cream and brown sugar in a medium-size sauce pan and cook over medium high heat, stirring frequently, until the sugar has melted and it comes to the simmer.
- Pour this immediately over the chocolate chips, tilting the bowl to make sure that all the chips are covered with the cream mixture. Put a plate over the bowl and then let sit, undisturbed, for 5 minutes.
- Remove the cover and using a whisk slowly stir the mixture until it is smooth and shiny. You can let the frosting rest on the counter until it thickens but this takes a long time. Better method is to put the bowl in the refrigerator and give it a few stirs with a whisk about every 10 minutes. In about 45 minutes it will thicken to spreading consistency. Frost the cake as described above. If the frosting gets too thick let it rest at room temperature until spreadable. The frosting, however, spreads very easily and evenly.
