Foodie Friday! - Cocoa Medallion Cake - Salt Not Optional

Our church's college ministry is called "The Salt Company."  The Salt Company has over 100 connection groups (Bible Study groups), and we were fortunate enough to host one group for their weekly study a month ago.  We loved having the girls here so I thought it would be fun to get together and bake.    

So Ceara, Ashley, Elizabeth, and Kristin came over last Saturday to spend some time visiting and baking. 

The girls wanted to make a cake, so I thought nothing sounded better than a homemade chocolate cake.

In addition, my best friend Linda was spending the weekend with us, so she was able to meet the girls and get to know them as well.  

Since we couldn't start baking without food on board, Michael picked up pizza for us and Linda got our sugar levels going with Scotcheroos.  

Then the cake making started.  Here's the recipe we used:

Cocoa Medallion Cake

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa

3/4 cup boiling water

1/4 cup margarine or butter, softened

1/4 cup shortening

2 cups sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1/8 tsp salt

2 eggs

1-1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup buttermilk or sour milk

1-3/4 cups unsifted all-purpose flour

Stir together cocoa and boiling water until smooth; set aside.  Cream butter or margarine, shortening, sugar, vanilla, and salt in large mixer bowl until light and fluffy.  Add eggs; beat well.  Stir baking soda into buttermilk or sour milk; add alternately with flour to creamed mixture.  Blend in cocoa mixture.

The girls thought it would be fun to make a layer cake so we (Ashley really did all of the work mixing the cake up) used 3, 8-inch cake pans.  

Ashley sprayed each one with nonstick baking spray, then cut a circle of wax paper so it lined the bottom of the pan.  Lastly she sprinkled each pan with a bit of flour and shook the pan to evenly distribute it. 

Ashley divided the batter between the three pans. 

The recipe says to pour into 2 round layer pans or 8-inch square pans.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes. Our cakes were done at about 25 minutes or so since we used 3 smaller pans rather than 2 larger ones, so check the cake earlier than indicated. Use a toothpick to make sure the center is done.  

We let the cakes cool in the pans for a bit.  They had pulled away from the sides of the pans, so it was  easy for Ashley to tip them out, peel off the wax paper and let them finish cooling on a cooling rack.  

While the cakes were cooling we made the frosting.  We used my favorite frosting recipe that is wonderful on anything: cakes, sugar cookies, etc.  (See the "Sugar Cookie Bars" recipe here on my blog for Linda's frosting recipe.)

Ashley has a Wilton cake decorating kit so the girls decided to make a spring-themed cake with different colored frosting.

Kristin stirred together the blue frosting.

Ceara worked really hard to get just the right shade of purple!

And Elizabeth gave Belle and Willow attention.  Actually Elizabeth also made the pink frosting.

Ashley loves to bake, so she frosted the layers and assembled the cake. 

  

Aren't the colors beautiful?  The cake looked so amazing and pretty!  Linda and I laughed that we had never had a layer cake turn out as tall and nice as Ashley's cake did.  

And Elizabeth put the final touches on the cake.  This was her first try at using the flower tip and writing on a cake.  She did awesome!  You should have seen the photos being taken of the cake!  I had my camera out and several of the girls were taking pictures with their phones!

And just because you can never have too much chocolate, after we all got our pictures.... we drizzled the top with ganache. That recipe is on my blog too.  

Doesn't this look amazing?  

But you can only admire a cake for so long, then you have to dig in. We  all sat down and had a piece of decadent chocolate cake... and before long the 6 of us ladies (and Michael) were in a chocolate coma.  I wish I had photographed some of the dazed looks this resulted in.  

These girls are such a blessing to us.  It is fun to spend time with them, find out what is going on in their busy lives with college and work, and just laugh with them.  

Salt is usually optional in a recipe, but on this day Salt was definitely the perfect ingredient!