Wedding Cake

I decided on trying a different homemade cake for the wedding. This was Martha Stewart's Devil's Food Cake. It made about 8 cups of batter. I think I ended up making three batches for my three their (10, 8 & 6") 2", double layered cake. (Which I made with imported extra fatty butter!-which, if you are losing weight…I found it! I had been sampling this cake far too much.)

This recipe was from Martha Stewart's Wedding Cakes book.

Firstly, get your pans and your oven ready. (I either spay or butter my pans, parchment paper them and spray or butter them again. Then dust with cocoa powder since it's a chocolate cake. Remember not to leave your cake in the pan once it's baked for more than 10 minutes or you could have trouble getting them out!) Preheat oven to 350'.

You'll need:
1 1/2 cups  (3 sticks- shown below is 2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature. (Plus some extra for your pans)
3 cups of cake flour (not self-rising), sifted
3/4 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder, (plus more for dusting your pans)
1/2 cup boiling water
2 1/4 cup regular white sugar
1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup Homogenized or 3 %  (or whole) milk

This is the PEI butter. YUM!  & the Dutch processed cocoa from Costco. You can see in the back ground that I've already melted my chocolate into a paste. 

Stir together cocoa powder and boiling water to make a paste. I used my measuring cup for this.

Mix butter and sugar together in mixer with paddle attachment. (cut cubes are easier to work with). She says about 4 minutes to make the mixture pale and fluffy. Mine took bit longer.

Hopefully you can notice a change in the colour. It did get nice, white and fluffy. Next, I added the beaten eggs. Nice and slow.

Keep mixing until it is no longer "slick". Shiny and slimy, more like.

Sift together your flour, baking soda and salt into a separate bowl. In your mixer, gradually add your cocoa mix, then add (mixer on low speed) flour mixture. Then pour batter into prepared pans. 

This is the yummiest batter I had ever tasted. 

My pans were 2" deep.

10" - ~ 6 cups of batter, 50 minutes

8" - ~4 cups of batter, 40 minutes

6" - ~ 2 cups of batter, 35 minutes

* Remember to turn your cake pans halfway through the baking process.

This is the cake straight out of the oven. I still had to trim off the top. Once cakes are removed from pans, set on a wire rack. Then once they were completely cooled I wrapped my cakes up with plastic wrap and set them in the freezer for about a week,  I then iced them frozen and set them back in the freezer until I was ready for the fondant. 

Next time I will post icing tips and my pics. 

**I'm still trying to be happy in my journey? Are you?**