The Sweet Side of Sour Cream

12/17/10: Sour Cream Chocolate Cake with Fudge Frosting

Recipe details: Cake recipe is pretty typical, but the addition of sour cream and the fact that you do not need to alternate between dry and wet ingredients (like this one), makes it more special and easier to prepare.

Defining moments: This recipe calls for cocoa powder and I went and used the King Arthur Flour's Double Dutch Dark Cocoa Powder for the first time. My parents gave me a gift card to use on kingarthurflour.com so that's how I got my hands on such a delicious sounding ingredient.

Recipe sources: The recipe comes from Hershey's. Find it here.

What I learned: I've made cake before so I didn't learn any new techniques this time. However, I did find that this cake, along with the fudge frosting, is very easy to do. The frosting isn't your normal buttercream, it is richer and not cloyingly sweet. It almost aways seems like the cooked frostings are so much better. Is it just me?

I should note here that I made two types of frostings. One had grocery store cocoa (I think it is from Gordon's?), and the other had King Arthur Flour's dark cocoa.

Any modifications? No, I made no changes.

How did it taste? I thought it was perfect for a lighter cake and I believe everyone agrees with me. I say, "...for a lighter cake," because I LOVE dense cakes. :) Both kinds of frostings were so yummy. But which one was the favorite? Most everyone thought the dark cocoa type was lacking flavor (or maybe not enough contrast to the dark cocoa cake?), so the grocery store variety won this round.

How about a 2nd time? Yes, definitely.

It is self-explanatory but the pan to the left is grocery store cocoa frosting, and the one to the right has the King Arthur Flour's dark cocoa.

I love shots like the one above.