Monday, January 25, 2016

red wine chocolate cake

In addition to multitudinous amounts of baked goods my brother receives for Christmas from his clients, is the occasional bottle of wine. I don't like to drink alcohol, and he is trying to stay from sugars, carbs, etc.

Just when I realized we had seven bottles of the stuff taking up too much space in the kitchen, I saw a recipe for chocolate cake made with some red wine, on the Smitten Kitchen blog.  Perfect!

Then, just the other day, I found out that this Wednesday, the 27th, is National Chocolate Cake Day. Well. Can you guess what I did today?


This is a recipe for a nine inch, one layer cake, which is thinner than your average layer. Because of the wine flavor in it, Deb suggests either a topping made with mascarpone, or just a powdered sugar dusting. But my intention was to bring it to work, and there are nine of us on Wednesdays. I had to make two layers, didn't I? So what was I to put between the layers?

I didn't have mascarpone, and anyway, I didn't want something which would be fussy and require refrigeration. That expensive fig and chocolate spread I've seen in the store would be ideal, but - I didn't have that, either. I began to imagine a chocolate buttercream, but a soft one, with a bit of spice.


My Betty Crocker recipe for cocoa buttercream looked right: 1/3 cup of butter, 2 c. of xxx sugar, one tsp. vanilla, 1/3 cup of cocoa, and some milk. I suddenly got an idea to use a bit of plain greek yogurt for the milk - that was it!  It's soft, and has a tang. Just right for between those layers, with some "snow" on top. Plain is best with this, I think.

Wednesday's the day!

9 comments:

  1. What an interesting cake recipe. It really does sound (and look) yummy. I think I'm going to have to try this one soon . . . maybe Wednesday. : ) Although, who needs a special excuse to bake a cake? Not me!

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  2. We'll see tomorrow how it tastes. :)

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  3. Ooooh! Chocolate cake, period! ♥ I don't drink alcohol at all, but this sounds quite interesting. I've never heard of any cake recipes with wine as an ingredient. Yes, do tell tomorrow! I hope it's good.

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  4. can't wait to hear how it was--knowing the staff, I'm sure it was a hit

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  5. I have a chocolate liqueur cake recipe, but wine would be much different, and I like what you say about it not being too sweet...I am going to try this!

    (I hopped over here from roosje's blog)

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  6. This sounds so yummy! I would never have thought that wine could be added to a cake recipe.

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  7. Smitten Kitchen is a favorite blog of one of our daughters! I'm so glad I didn't know about this honor given to chocolate in time to observe it! I've little resistance where chocolate is concerned.:-)

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