Recipe: Not-so-fail Cakes

So the cake I made last time (and ultimately failed at) was for preparation for this one. Since I have no faith in my skills as a baker or cook, I couldn't just give out a cake to someone without testing the recipe first. I say this as if I remade the cake again, but I really made an entirely new cake for said person. Anyways, let us continue.

First, my baby:

I'm nice, I know.

It got a stain on the side. :(

BLARGH, I SPENT THREE DAYS ON THIS. THREE DAYS. |
I know it doesn't look like it, because it looks pretty bad on the front, but it's true. Three days.

Wish I could have taken a picture of the cross section, because layered chocolate and plain cake to make a kind of stripe pattern. The outside is pretty boring being stark white and all save the words, but I intentionally wanted to have it look all innocent on the outside.

Chocolate and White Genoise with Coffee Frosting Proud of it because though it's based off recipes, when I was making it I had to rely on either memory or my taste buds thanks to the internet being down.

Cake

• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 cup cake flour (shift the flour before measuring)
• 2 tbsp melted butter
• (4 tsp chocolate powder)

Frosting

• 3/4 cups instant coffee
• 1 1/2 pkgs of cream cheese
• 1/4 cup vanilla yogurt
• 1/2 powderd sugar
• (Dark chocolate bar)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a 7" cake pan with parchment/wax paper.
2. Mix the sugar with the eggs until combined. In a larger bowl of hot water (around 170 degrees), beat the eggs with a hand mixer until it doubled in size. When the eggs are warm to the touch, take it out of the water and continue beating on high until you can draw ribbons for at least 3 seconds.
3. Mix in the the chocolate powder with the flour if using, then shift it into the batter. Swiftly fold into the batter and don't worry if it's not fully combined. Then fold in the butter until the batter is uniform and smooth. Try not to mix too much.
4. Pour the batter into the cake pan and drop a couple of times to break any air bubbles. Bake for 30 minutes or until it comes out clean. Drop the pan again once out of the oven to prevent shrinking (apparently, I don't think it really works).
5. As for the frosting, just mix everything together. I also melted half of a chocolate bar and poured ribbons on top on the frosting, popped it in the freezer for a while, then broke it up to make "chips".

I decorated the whole thing with fondant, which was just a bag of marshmallows, with a bunch of powdered sugar mixed in to make it dough-like. And I piped those words in dark chocolate.

Once I saw how heartbroken my dad would've been after finding out the cake was a lie, when I got back from delivery, I whipped up a completely new cake. The only problem is is that there's barely anything in the fridge I could use to make the cake look semi-fancy. I had some cherries, half a tub of yoghurt, and some extra dark chocolate at my disposal though, and scrapped something up.

I took the remainder of the vanilla Greek yoghurt I had and mixed it with chopped cherries and some powdered sugar and allowed that to chill in the fridge before spreading between the cake slices. I also made a kind of dark chocolate ganache with milk instead of cream to use to top off the dessert.

And for a dessert I just made on a whim with limited resources, I guess it didn't turn out bad. The cake is a little dry, but genoise is like that. Then again, how should I know for certain? Someone ate my share of cake too.

Now my mom wants me to make her a cake on her birthday, but I really don't think that's a great idea.