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cake on Fridays

Everyday Chocolate Cake from Smitten Kitchen, view of the just baked cake in the pan

Since our Move To Seattle anniversary cake we seem to have started a new Friday night dinner tradition in our house, which is cake. This past week I made Smitten Kitchen’s Everyday Chocolate Cake. It was so easy, just the mixer bowl, my underused kitchen scale and a cake pan, wha-la! I didn’t have a loaf pan so I used my angle food cake pan. It turned out great, like a big chocolate donut.

Everyday Chocolate Cake from Smitten Kitchen, the cake turned out and looking like a squared off donut

The week before this I made Best Birthday Cake, also from Smitten Kitchen. Well, I used a boxed yellow cake mix and made the icing. I used a mix because lately I’ve been noticing all these sites recreating yellow cake so that it tastes like the stuff they loved out of the box – Angry Chicken, and of course this Smitten Kitchen recipe. But, I had never had yellow cake from a box so I decided I needed to experience the real thing before moving on to making my own. (Also, it was easier.)

The chocolate icing from SK was so very easy, but a bit too both tangy and fudgy for my taste. I’ll make it again and add more sweetener (the recipe allows for that) and use a different chocolate. See? An excuse to make more cake.

Everyday Chocolate Cake from Smitten Kitchen, two slices of cake, raspberries added later

The best thing about Cake Fridays? They inspire us to make more of a big deal out of dinner. We try new cocktails, use the nice dishes to eat outside on the deck, we sit and talk about our week and linger for longer than we would otherwise because there is cake to be eaten a bit later. It’s perfect. Having leftover cake for Saturday breakfast is a bonus.

· comments [20] · 08-9-2010 · categories:food ·

20 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Jen // Aug 9, 2010 at 12:46 pm

    Aaaaack!

    I love you and I love your blog, and I love-love-love cake, but the “wha-la” set off my biggest pet peeve blinky. It’s voila!

    (Sorry…I feel much better now.)

  • 2 Jess // Aug 9, 2010 at 12:47 pm

    That sounds wonderful! There’s much to be said for lingering over dinner, especially when the evenings are so beautiful here during the summer!

  • 3 megan // Aug 9, 2010 at 1:12 pm

    Jen – Thanks, I do know it’s “voila”, I was being phonetic-al. Sorry it bugged you. I get somebody mentioning it each time I use it. Truthfully it’s something of an inside joke for me as I purposely say “wha la” when I speak it as sort of a holdover from a habit where my college roommates would amuse each other by fake-refusing to pronounce commonly used foreign words correctly.

  • 4 Anotheryarn // Aug 9, 2010 at 1:51 pm

    Hmmm, we have Pizza! Friday! exclamation marks and all, pizza can be quite exciting. I wonder where I can fit cake into the regular rotation? Oh and Smitten Kitchen’s Best Birthday cake is quite delicious – much better than yellow box cake (I was never a big yellow box cake fan).

  • 5 Jess // Aug 9, 2010 at 2:06 pm

    I am out of the habit of regular cake baking (apart from the Lemon and Raspberry-Lime Layer Cake I made last week but that was for a birthday so doesn’t count!). You have motivated me – the family will be pleased…

  • 6 Maureen // Aug 9, 2010 at 2:41 pm

    Oh you think right..leftover cake for breakfast. :)

  • 7 Michelle // Aug 9, 2010 at 4:10 pm

    What a great idea, I need to form a weekly tradition like this!

  • 8 EJMS // Aug 9, 2010 at 4:16 pm

    Our favorite breakfast joint makes frenchtoast out of almond coffee cake…battered, fried cake that you are required to butter…I’m just saying.

  • 9 Jenn // Aug 9, 2010 at 4:27 pm

    I want chocolate cake right now. That giant donut is making me DROOL! I’m going to join you on cake fridays…can’t wait, I may have to do cake tuesdays!

  • 10 Steffie from Future Work at Home Mom // Aug 9, 2010 at 5:31 pm

    We had a similar “new tradition” we enacted last week we call Pieday Friday, which had pretty much the same effect of making dinner a bigger deal on Fridays. It really helps bring in the weekend, and plus, who doesn’t love pie/cake? The fun part I think is going to be experimenting with new pie recipes, and I hope you’ll be doing the same here so I can get some new cake recipes too for the soon to be “Caketastic Thursdays”, followed by “Shamefilled Saturdays” where I weigh in at my WW meeting.

  • 11 Lindsay Jewell // Aug 10, 2010 at 1:14 am

    I’ve been wanting to try that everyday cake. It looks pretty amazing. Cake Friday is a good idea, I think. :)

  • 12 Seanna Lea // Aug 10, 2010 at 6:44 am

    I was planning on using the easy cake recipe to make mini-cupcakes, but I don’t think I have nearly enough pans for all of that!

  • 13 Jennifer // Aug 10, 2010 at 9:09 am

    This post reminds me why I love this blog, and that I don’t come here nearly as often as I used to. I’ll change that, I promise!!!

  • 14 clotilde // Aug 10, 2010 at 10:21 am

    And here I was, wondering what an “angle food cake” was and why I’d never heard about this cool-sounding geometrical concoction! :)

    Also, if you want to be really finicky about it, it’s really “voilà” with an accent on the a. ;)

  • 15 megan // Aug 10, 2010 at 10:44 am

    Clotilde – To be honest I have never actually made angel food cake in my angel food cake pan. So far just creme caramel and this chocolate cake. Will have to try angel food cake next, though I admit I find it intimidating!

  • 16 Sarah // Aug 12, 2010 at 2:52 pm

    If you try angel food cake, use the boxed egg whites! It’s way simpler than seperating like a dozen eggs! After that it’s super simple.
    We are on a cake kick in my house too since I realized I have way too many dessert recipes to meals. Our frequency depends on how fast the FH eats it, ha ha.

  • 17 wendy // Aug 12, 2010 at 6:00 pm

    I can’t discuss chocolate cake because I only have eyes for Barefoot Contessa’s Beatty Chocolate Cake. I made it in June and it’s the only chocolate cake that will exist in this household.

    http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/beattys-chocolate-cake-recipe/index.html

    …hope I’m not over-hyping it. Oh! I should note that I didn’t make her icing – I did a cream cheese one instead.

    ;-)

  • 18 JennyBakes // Aug 13, 2010 at 12:36 pm

    I’m a huge fan of the cake friday idea. In my house we have scone saturdays!

    If you’re getting into cake, I swear that some of the Cake Doctor recipes can be really good – they start with cake mix, it’s true, but what is cake mix other than the dry ingredients conveniently located in one pouch? But the tweaks she does with the mixes takes them above and beyond without the dry-crumbly issue of a real butter cake. :)

  • 19 JennyBakes // Aug 13, 2010 at 12:37 pm

    P.S. Don’t make Nigella’s Quadruple Chocolate cake – it sounds amazing but seriously, I couldn’t taste the chocolate, not the way I wanted to.

  • 20 Valencia // Aug 16, 2010 at 5:19 pm

    You are correct. The Everyday Chocolate Cake is delicious. It tastes better the day after. Yum! I like your big chocolate doughnut!

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