Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake: Just One of the Treasures in a Great Cake Cookbook!
If you love sweet treats, beautiful irresistible desserts, simple home-made goodies, and elegant expressions of the professional pastry chef’s genius, you will love Jill O’Connor and her latest cookbook. Entitled Cake, I Love You: Decadent, Delectable, and Do-Able Recipes, this bright, delight-filled book is a whimsical valentine to the pleasures of baking, and also a smart, practical, and detailed workbook on how to create exquisite, spectacularly tasty confections for all the occasions that anchor and enrich our days.
Learn from the Best!
A prolific food writer, cookbook author, and professional pastry chef with best-selling cookbooks and a monthly recipe feature story in the San Diego Union Tribune, Jill knows all the secrets and techniques of the pastry pro’s kitchen. A graduate of Le Cordon Bleu Cooking School in London, Jill studied at the International Pastry Arts Center in New York City, and worked as a pastry chef before turning to food writing as a means of sharing her knowledge and love for sweets and baking in general and cakes in particular.
As a mom with two daughters, Jill knows the meaning and value of making cupcakes for soccer practice and school events. She applies her pro-skills to crafting dream-come-true birthday cakes for her family, as well as to her business, creating recipes and food stories for newspapers and magazines including Bon Appetit, Southern Living, Fine Cooking, and Food & Wine.
I made three recipes from Cake I Love You, beginning with Plum-Cardamom Cake. I used nectarines instead of plums, and remain amazed at how lovely, elegant, and delicious it is, spiced gently with nutmeg and cardamom, enriched with almond paste and almond extract, and dusted with crunch almond slices and a little blizzard of powdered sugar.
In Addition….
You may want a cookie or a brownie, since we’re on the subject of chocolate, and I’ve got you covered for that too:
Try my Turtle Mocha Brownies HERE, or see my post about Jill’s fabulous Hunka Chunka Chocolate Chip Cookies HERE!
The English classic cake known as Sticky Toffee Pudding could have been chocolate, with the deep and intense rich goodness the layer provided. Yet all that intense flavor came from chopped dates. Incredible texture and flavor, new to me, but now it will be on my go-to list for ease and simplicity in a classic cake. Whipped cream made a fine accompaniment, though vanilla ice cream could also serve nobly in this cause of gilding a traditional and time-honored lily.
The Cake I Love You recipe I’m sharing in this post is simple and speedy, a delight to bake and take. Now, if you’re feeling culinarily ambitious, Jill’s chocolate chapter also offers Chocolate-Peanut Butter Blackout Cake; Black Irish Chocolate-Whiskey Cake; and Shot in the Dark, a dazzling creation with Espresso-Stracciatella Buttercream and Milk Chocolate-Espresso Ganache.
Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake Can Be Cupcakes, Too!
Chocolate-Mayonnaise Cake with Chocolate Bar Frosting delivers complex deliciousness with simplicity and speed. In Cake I Love You, Jill has created a book of recipes we can play with, choosing a challenge, reaching for new skills and lofty goals; or going straight for a can-do confection.
Before dessert, you can enjoy her savory recipes here: (CLICK THIS) offering a cold-weather supper of chipotle beef chili, beer-raised bread, and okay, a cake, but it’s a Spiced Rum Pumpkin Bundt Cake and it’s very very fine.
For three of Jill’s wonderfully do-able and hearty recipes Click Here!
Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake
This classic recipe came from a major mayonnaise manufacturer in the 20th century, and has been a favorite through many decades because sounds odd but tastes great and is simple to make. Jill's dynamite Melted Chocolate Bar Frosting does NOT contain mayonnaise, and does contain deliciousness beyond measure. I made cupcakes, but this same recipe works wonderfully as a sheet pan cake, 13 x 9 inch cake pan, or as a two layer cake, fudgy-chocolatey heaven.
Ingredients
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- ¾ cup natural cocoa powder
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp salt
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup mayonnaise (do not use low-fat)
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 tsp instant espresso powder or coffee powder
- 1 1/3 cups boiling water
- Ingredients for Chocolate Bar Frosting
- 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
- 1 cup milk chocolate chips
- ½ cup unsalted butter
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 tsp vanilla
- Large pinch fine sea salt
- 2 to 3 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 350°F.
- Spray a metal 9- by-13 inch sheet pan (or two 9-inch round cake pans with nonstick cooking spray. (If using round cake pans, line the bottom of each pan with parchment paper.)
- In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the sugar and eggs together at medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes. Beat in the mayonnaise and the vanilla until smooth.
- Lower the mixer speed to its lowest speed and beat in 1/2 the dry ingredients just until combined. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl.
- In a small bowl, mix together the espresso powder with the boiling water.
- Add 1/2 of the espresso mixture to the batter and beat on low speed just until the batter is smooth, about 5 to 10 seconds.
- Add the remaining dry ingredients and beat just until combined.
- Beat in the remaining espresso and beat just until smooth. The batter will be somewhat thin.
- Scrape the batter into the prepared pan (s) and bake 22 to 25 minutes until a wooden skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.
- Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cool completely.
- For the frosting: In a large, microwave-safe bowl, combine the semisweet and milk chocolate chips with the butter. Heat on high power for 1 minute.
- Stir together until the butter and chocolates are completely melted and smooth. If not completely melted after 1 minute, heat again in 15-second increments, stirring until smooth.
- Use a large balloon whisk or a wooden spoon and stir in the sour cream.
- Beat in add 2 cups [xx g] confectioners’ sugar, just until smooth and spreadable. If a thicker, sweeter frosting is desired, beat in an additional cup of sugar.
- Spread the top of the cooled cake with the Melted Chocolate Bar Frosting.
- Cut into squares and serve.
Notes
Cover pan tightly with plastic wrap or foil, and store at room temperature. The cake will stay fresh for about 2 days.
(For layer cake: place one layer on a cake stand and frost the top with about 1 cup frosting. Top with second layer and spread the remaining frosting on the top and around the sides of the cake.).)
I have Jill’s book and even though I have a huge collection of baking and cake books, Cake, I Love You must be my absolute favorite! Her dividing the recipes into flavor chapters is brilliant – who doesn’t choose to bake a cake because they have craved a certain flavor? I want something chocolate, I want a great recipe. Lemon? Ditto. Or caramel. Not having to flip through a book looking for all the cakes of that flavor is a brilliant time saver. The same for level of complexity. She makes it so easy! And her cakes are just fabulous! Now I have to make this Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake!