January 21, 2018

Awesome Cake Recipe

Awesome Cake Recipe

As promised, today I would like to share our favourite family cake recipe.

A long time ago, I learned how to make this cake from my mom. This cake was very popular in our town back in Soviet Ukraine. Almost every family I knew was making exactly the same or slightly different cake for any big holiday.

I, personally, like the simplicity and affordability of this recipe – plus it’s easy to modify.

In the original recipe from my mom, the cake had three different layers: first layer was with walnuts, second with poppy seeds and third with raisins. My children hated all three of these additional ingredients. So I had to be creative.

This is how this cake became a chocolate cake.

I was making the same chocolate cake for every birthday in our family and Christmas for more than twenty years. Imagine – twenty years! This boredom had ended last year when our youngest daughter asked to make a vanilla cake for her birthday. I removed cocoa powder from the recipe and voila! The vanilla cake was ready.

Later, for our other daughter’s birthday, I decided to try something new and that is how the peanut butter and chocolate cake was born.

For Christmas, I decided to modify an original recipe to accommodate most of our family members preferences. My grown-up kids are okay with walnuts and poppy seeds but still hate raisins.

In this post, you will find the basic cake recipe (which is plain vanilla) and how to modify this recipe to make chocolate and peanut butter layers, and “Nuts, Seeds and Dulce de Leche” cake

Basic crust mix

Ingredients:

3 cups of flour

3 eggs

3 cups of white sugar

3 cups of sour cream

3 teaspoons of baking powder

Mix well all the ingredients with the beater in a bowl

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cake

Ingredients:

Basic Crust Mix (see the above recipe)

Plus:

4 tablespoons of cocoa powder

1 1/2 cup of butter

1/1/2 cup of peanut butter

1 1/2 cup of icing sugar

50g of finely grated milk chocolate

For cake soak: You will need to dissolve 2 tablespoons of condensed milk and 1 teaspoon of rum (optional) in a cup of warm water.

Icing

Using a mixer: combine butter, peanut butter and icing sugar together until smooth.

Directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 400 F.
  2. Mix all of the ingredients for the basic cake mix in a large bowl.
  3. Add cocoa powder and mix well.
  4. Divide the mix into three equal portions in separate bowls (for the different layers).
  5. Grab a 9” cake pan and grease with butter.
  6. Pour one of the separate cake mixes into the pan and cake for approximately 20-22 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
  7. Bake the other two cake layers. If you have three 9” pans and a large oven, you can bake all the cake layers simultaneously. Otherwise, rotate until you’ve baked all 3 from the cake mix you separated.
  8. Let the cake cool.
  9. Using a knife, trim the crust around the circumference of each layer.

10. Then, carefully, cut each layer horizontally (and equally) to make two thinner cake layers. You should have 6 cake layers at the end.

11. Take one of the thin layers and lay it down on a plate. Then using a teaspoon, pour a little of the cake soak on top around the whole layer. Spread the icing on top.

  1. Place another layer on top and repeat the cake soak + icing procedure.
  2. Repeat with the remainder of the layers.
  3. Once you spread the icing on the final layer, sprinkle the chocolate shavings evenly to top it off.

“Nuts, Seeds and Dulce de Leche” cake

Ingredients:

Basic Cake Mix (see the above recipe)

2/3 cup of poppy seeds

2/3 cup of crushed walnuts

1 ½ cup of butter

1 ½ cup of Dulce de Leche

6 graham crackers (crushed)

For cake soak: You will need to dissolve 2 tablespoons of condensed milk and 1 teaspoon of rum (optional) in a cup of warm water.

Icing

Using a mixer, combine butter and Dulce de Leche until smooth.

Directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 400 F.
  2. Mix all of the ingredients for the basic cake mix in a large bowl.
  3. Divide the mix into three equal portions in separate bowls (for the different layers).
  4. Add the poppy seeds into one of the cake mix bowls and mix well.
  5. Add the nuts into a different bowl and mix well as well.
  6. Leave the third bowl as the plain mix.
  7. Repeat steps 5-10 steps from the previous recipe.
  8. Place the nut layer first on the plate and soak with the water/condensed milk mixture. Spread the icing on top.
  9. Place the poppyseed layer on top, soak it and spread the icing on top.
  10. Place the plain layer next and repeat the soak/icing process.
  11. Repeat the layering in steps 8-10.
  12. After spreading the icing on final layer, top it off with the Graham cracker crumbs.

Filed Under: About Food