Chocolate Oreo Cake with Quick Fluffy frosting- Happy Birthday Ria!

"Birthdays are Nature's way of telling us to eat cake ;) Here's one filled with wishes for you Ria! Hope the year ahead is as awesome as you are!"

I am always looking for an excuse bake cakes. And what could be a better reason to bake a moist chocolate cake and slather it with fluffy clouds of marshmallow like 7 minute frosting ( which takes about 10 mins to make by the way) and crumbled Oreos than a galpal's special day! 

Yesterday was my friend and awesome blogger Ria's birthday and of course I immediately wanted to bake her a cake. Even though she lives at the other end of the country and would only get to see the cake, while I get to eat it, on her behalf of course :P  I then proceeded to happily spend all day looking for the perfect cake recipe and thinking of a pretty pink girly cake. As I called to wish her I asked her if she had any preferences, the birthday girl revealed that she would like chocolate. We got to talking about one of our favourite cakes to bake, which I know as my sis-in-law's easy but perfect chocolate cake, and which Ria knows as the Hershey's Perfect cake. 


The interesting thing about this cake is that it is made with oil instead of butter. Now there are lots of arguments about butter being the vital ingredient in cake and oil is like a dirty word when it comes to baking.  I agree that butter imparts a lot of flavor, but the thing about oil based cakes is that apart from being easier to make without all that creaming of the butter etc., they are incredibly moist and stay moist longer too. I have dabbled quite a bit with butter-less cakes since this discovery. 


Once the decision about the cake was made I spent another two three hours thinking about the frosting :) Yes I can take several days thinking about the cake I want to bake while it probably takes less than two hours to actually bake it! But part of the fun is in the thinking, looking up recipes on food blogs and cook books, planning and dreaming up the many possibilities! 

I suddenly remembered that Ria likes Oreo cookies and had been talking about wanting to bake an Oreo pie as well as mentioning an Oreo ice cream cake ( both which sound really good) recently, so I wanted to incorporate Oreos in the cake. T and I love Oreo cookies too, though the Bourbon chocolate biccies I grew up on are still my favourite and of course you can use them instead of Oreos. Since those are rectangular, why not cut them diagonally so that you have triangular shapes to decorate your cake with. Oh and by the way, Oreo cookies are dairy and egg free! ( not sure about the Bourbons) Whoo hoo! all those allergic to milk and eggs, you can safely eat away! 

Things didn't go perfectly once I got down to bake tho, first I realized I was out of sugar so had to postpone baking till today. Then I couldn't find any baking paper to line my cake pans and proceeded to grease it well and hope it wouldn't stick. I forgot just how moist this cake was, and ofcourse when I un-moulded it, both layers stuck to the cake pan and I had to pry them out with a spatula and they both cracked right down the middle. Thankfully I was able to smoosh them back together again, so not too much harm done, and the fluffy frosting (which is also once of the lightest and lowest calorie frosting one can find ) covered up all my boo boos! 

Perfect Chocolate Cake

Recipe source: My sister-in-law ( She got it from a NZ newspaper where it was called Serena's Cheating Chocolate cake by Serena Bass author of Serena, Food & Stories : Feeding Friends Every Hour of the Day. It is similar to the Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Cake) 

Dry Ingredients

• 3/4 cup cocoa pwd (preferably alkalized or dutch processed)
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking pwd
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp table salt

Wet ingredients

• 1 cup buttermilk ( I use half a cup of yogurt and half a cup of water, you can also use soymilk soured with about a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar to make this dairy free)
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup boiling water

Method

Preheat oven to 180 C or 350 F

Lightly grease base and sides of  two 8 inch deep round cake tins with oil. 

It is best to also line the bottom of the cake pan with parchment paper since it is very moist and may stick to the bottoms.

In a large bowl sift cocoa sugar flour baking pwd, baking soda and salt and combine.

In another bowl put the eggs, and all the other wet ingredients (except the water) and whisk

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and whisk until half combined.

Pour the boiling water and whisk till fully combined and the batter is smooth

Pour the batter into the prepared baking tin and place in oven for 30-35 mins until skewer inserted into the center of cake comes out clean

You could also pour the batter into prepared cupcake tins and bake for about 20-35 mins or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Click here for other pan sizes 
This cake can easily be made ahead and even frozen, triple wrapped in cellophane and kept at room temperature for about  three hours to defrost.

Fluffy White frosting 

Dairy-free, light and low calorie with about 68 Calories per serving, apart from being quick and easy to whip up! It is also called Boiled Icing, and also 7 minute frosting. 

(Recipe Source: Allrecipes.com from here )

Ingredients

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup water
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar ( if you don't have cream of tartar, you can add a pinch of salt to the egg whites and leave them for about 5 mins before whipping like I did) 
• 2 egg whites ( Use up the yolks to make this curry or lemon curd, or freeze them with a pinch of sugar each for a later use) 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

• In a medium mixing bowl, whip the egg whites and vanilla with an electric mixer to soft peaks which droop and don't stick up straight. ( Wash and dry bowls and beaters thoroughly before using, and ensure they don't have even a drop of oil or butter or other fat which will prevent the eggwhites from whipping properly)
• In a saucepan, stir together the sugar, water and cream of tartar ( omit the cream of tartar if you added salt to the egg whites instead). Cook over medium-high heat until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is bubbly.
• Gradually add the hot sugar mixture to the egg whites while whipping constantly ( I used medium-high speed) until stiff peaks form, about 7 to 10 minutes. Don't over whip or it will be difficult to spread.
• If you over whip, add a little cornsyrup to thin it out and beat slowly again. 
• You can also tint this in what ever colour you please by adding a few drops of food colouring or even cocoa powder while whipping the eggwhites, but do not add any butter, chocolate or other fat containing elements as it will deflate the icing.
• Best to use immediately after making as it has a tendency to crust.

Soaking Syrup:

Make a simple syrup by mixing  1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup sugar in a cup. you can also add some Kahlua, rum or other liqueur if you like it a little boozy :) 

(Not so great beginning, but frosting saved the day!)

Assembly:

You can cut the two cake layers into a further 4 layers or leave them as is.

Pour a few spoonfuls of the soaking syrup over one cake layer

Top with the frosting and smooth it out until the edge of the cake layer. 

Add some chopped pieces of oreo cookies over the frosting so that the cake is also filled with oreos ( Optional)

Place a second cake layer over the frosting

Soak the second cake layer with a few spoonfuls of the syrup too and so on

Frost the sides and top of the cake

Here is a video by the awesome Zoe of Zoebakes.com showing you how to cut and frost cakes 

To decorate the sides of the cake, you can either use cake crumbs, or you can peel one half of the oreo cookie (reserve the side with the frosting) and crush it  until it is coarsely powdery and use Oreo cookie crumbs from about 5-6 cookie halves.

Pat the crumbs into place either all around the sides like on the famous cover of Dorie Greenspan's cookbook

or in strips like I did.

Cut the Oreo cookies in half and place decoratively around the cake. 


The cake is best served soon after it is frosted, though it can be kept out at room temperature for atleast a day. The frosting will harden a little the longer it is kept.


Verdict: Ria, I so wish you could take a bite and  tell me what you thought of it. T and I thought it was pretty good. The Oreos absorbed moisture from the cake and frosting and becomes soft and cakey, just melding into the overall texture of the cake. The light, melt in the mouth frosting was perfect for the very moist and chocolatey cake. I don't know how well it will pair with other cakes since it is very light and frothy, almost like whipped cream, but even lighter. I would say that for cakes which use whipped cream frosting, you can easily use this low cal one instead. Cakes that rely on the frosting for its flavor like chiffon cakes I think might not fare well with this, and a heavier buttercream frosting might be more apt there. 


Note: This moist chocolate cake is really good even just on it's own, baked into loves or bundts and perfectly decadent with some simple chocolate ganache poured on top. Here is a similar cake by Ina where she puts chocolate chips into the batter as well.