Chocolate Velvet Fudge Cake

This week's selection was the wonderful and easy Chocolate Velvet Fudge Cake. I baked this cake the day before I flew to California for Thanksgiving, in the midst of washing clothes (so I could pack), getting things ready for the cat sitter, and trying not to forget anything.

I have no photographic evidence of the baking, packing, presenting, or eating of the cake so you'll just have to take my word for it. Sorry this post will have no photos, pretty or otherwise.

November 24, 200
Name of Cake: The Cake TSA Didn't Care About
Occasion: HCB, and Thanksgiving
Constituents: a chocolate bundt cake

I actually have a silicone bundt pan; I bought it for nine bucks at a sale over the summer and this was my first time trying it out.

This cake is prepared like most of RLB's butter cakes, which means that after measuring everything out and dumping all the dry stuff in the mixing bowl and combining the eggs and whatever other liquids in another bowl, you can break down the mixing instructions like this:

30 sec
add butter + cocoa
1 1/2 min
eggs in two parts
30 sec between
bake 50-65 min

Well, at least I could. This is certainly the cliffs notes version and it assumes you know the basic RLB butter cake technique, but by now most of us do, right?

For the silicone bundt pan, the cake is left to cool upside down in the pan. Once cool, I covered a (handmade) cake round in foil, inverted the cake and bundt pan onto that and tightly wrapped the whole thing in plastic wrap. This got packed into my carry-on bag.

I wondered if the foil bottom or the unusual shape would set off the TSA employees, but I think the chocolate pumpkin pie I was carrying was the perfect decoy. Plus, it was Thanksgiving day and the airport was fairly quiet, and this is Portland, OR and TSA has never been the crazy assholes they are in other, larger airports. They mostly made jokes about classifying my pie as a gel so that they could confiscate it, and the cake in my carry-on luggage made it through the x-ray machine without a second glance. The pie also went through the machine, so everybody was disappointed to discover I hadn't baked a pair of very sharp scissors into it.

My mom had already baked an apple pie (from the apples in the backyard) and a pumpkin pie (from a pumpkin she roasted herself), and my sister made pumpkin squares (from cake mix and canned pumpkin). I added my chocolate pumpkin pie (canned pumpkin--mom was surprised) and saved the chocolate cake for Friday. Thanksgiving dinner was delicious and the nephew is now a walking, babbling, drooling machine which was more exciting than having 3 pies and pumpkin squares for dessert.

By Friday afternoon the pumpkin squares had been demolished (mostly by my brother in law) so I broke out the cake. My sister especially loved it--she called it a chocolate pound cake and she isn't too far off. The cake is dense, yet moist and tender with a strong chocolate punch. I used Dagoba cocoa powder this time around and I think I really like it. Dad liked the cake with whipped cream but I thought a scoop of vanilla ice cream would be a better pairing. Mostly my sister and I ate it out of hand. Mom is allergic to chocolate and doesn't like sweets that much so she didn't try it.

All in all, a great cake: simple to make, satisfying to eat. This is the perfect chocolate cake when you want a cakey snack without too much fuss.