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In this follow-up to my previous frosting post, I’ll explain how to make the cake.

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This Dark Chocolate, Burnt Orange Cake recipe makes an ostentatiously tall, 4-layer, one-hell-of-an-impact, birthday cake. The orange buttercream holds its own, even amongst all this chocolate, and it makes a gorgeous color contrast with the cake.

Ingredients for a 4-layer, 9-inch cake, serving 24+ (wedding style slices)

1 Darker than Black, Profoundly Chocolate Cake – cake only
1 batch Burnt Orange Silk Meringue Buttercream
1 batch “Dark Chocolate Ganache Frosting” (2-3 cups. See below.)

How To Do It:

1. Slice the fully cooled cake layers in half horizontally. Set aside the prettiest layer for the top.
2. With the remaining three layers, place one of them on a cake plate. Spread ¼ of the orange buttercream over it. Check carefully for evenness. Repeat with two remaining bottom layers.
3. Use the remainder of the buttercream to crumb-coat the side of the cake. Smooth the side of the cake with an offset spatula or bench scraper.
4. Place the cake in the fridge while you make and cool the ganache. The cake will be easier to frost if chilled.
5. Frost the top and sides with ganache. You won’t need an entire 3-cup batch of ganache; 2 cups will do – but this depends on your tastes. If you’re familiar with ganache, you might be accustomed to pouring it over the cake. A whipped ganache is made more for spreading than pouring. The chilled cake will instantly set the ganache, so spread it on in small sections.

Notes:

1. If this is just too much cake, you could cut the cake recipe in half, and make a still-pretty-impressive-sized, two-layer cake. In that case, you wouldn’t need all the buttercream. Or, you could eat one of the half-layers (or freeze it for later), and make a three-layer cake. In that case, I’d recommend using all the buttercream.
2. I usually make this cake with Dutch process cocoa, but this time I used natural cocoa. Though they’re not necessarily interchangeable, for this recipe, it works perfectly. Still very chocolaty, still deep and dark … but note the subtle, red undertone. I think the natural cocoa is a great match for the buttercream. Dutch process results in something more like the blackness of an Oreo, which, to me, would seem more Halloweenified against the orange. I wanted to avoid that, because I made this as a birthday cake. But come to think of it, after a certain age, birthdays can be kind of terrifying … still, if you decide to go that way, there are much more effective cakes.
3. You can slice the cake layers freeform, with a long, serrated knife (a bread knife, for instance), but I recommend that you use a cake slicer. This cake is too tall to risk having it not be level.
4. There is some debate about how long you can leave a buttercream out at room temperature – but we’re not talking minutes; we’re talking many hours to as much as a few days. I recommend you keep the cake in the fridge for the long term. This particular buttercream is pretty good cold, but if I had my druthers, or if I were serving it to guests, I’d allow it to come close to room temperature before serving. Take the cake out 60 minutes or more before serving, or cut slices of cold cake and give them 15 minutes before serving.
5. Should you put this 5½-inch-tall cake on a pedestal cake plate to make it look even higher? Of course you should. Be aware, though, that at a hefty 10 lbs, once you’ve carved half of the cake into slices, the remaining half will leave the plate decidedly imbalanced. It will tip over if you’re not careful.

6. If you used magic strips, you should have easily stackable layers. If not, and the layers are significantly domed, you can use a domed top as the top layer if you like the look, or you can trim it level. For the other domed top – the one that’s going to wind up as one of the bottom layers – you really will need to trim it. Magic strips are made of an ovenproof material. They’re adjustable; you fit them to your pans, then soak them in cold water. You want them cold and wet (with excess water squeezed out) when the cake goes into the oven, so I usually fit them to the pans, then remove them and leave them soaking in the sink until I’ve poured the cake batter into the pans. At that point, I set a strip on the counter, and gently press the pan into it. You can make your own magic strip by folding a cold, wet tea towel in foil, but a purchased one is tons easier. It works like this: the batter that is in contact with the metal pans cooks faster than the rest. As the top surface area of the cake nearest the rim of the pan begins to set, the still-rising batter continues to push upward in the center, creating a dome. A magic strip cools the pan, so that the surface area of the cake nearest the rim of the pan sets more slowly – more in sync with the rest of the cake. Theoretically, the cake should rise evenly, without doming. Magic strips work better with some cakes, and not as good with others. With some, you’ll get a cake so level that it won’t need trimming before stacking layers. With others, you’ll merely reduce the doming, which will still result in less trimming. I love the look of a domed cake. I think it looks more homemade, more charming, and it seems more forgiving in terms of decoration. But the taller I expect a layer cake to be (or the more formal looking), the more I want the layers to be level right from the get-go, the more I want to use a magic strip.
7. You’ll need to serve this cake on dinner plates, but what a presentation!

Any ganache will do, honestly. I used a recipe from The Cake Bible (by Rose Levy Beranbaum, pg. 269. William Morrow, New York, 1988), because it’s made in a food processor, which I was curious about. It worked perfectly … but so does the “pour hot cream over chocolate and let it sit” method, which takes a few minutes longer, but doesn’t require you to bother with the processor. However, I learned a great deal from Beranbaum’s recipe:

1. Boiling the cream will extend the ganache’s shelf life
2. Stirring 2 Tbs softened butter into the cooled, ready-for-spreading ganache will improve its texture as a spread-on frosting
3. Whipping the ganache – which I’d heard of many times but had not done before – will lighten its color as well as its texture and make it seem less fudgy. That may or may not be desirable, according to your preferences.
4. An ounce (2 Tbs) of Cognac, stirred into the ready-to-go ganache will deepen its flavor, making it taste ever so subtly earthier

Dark Chocolate, Burnt Orange Cake

Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. For those of you who thought a magic strip was a burlesque magician, sorry to disappoint. This leaves me wondering, though, is there a burlesque magician? I sort of feel like the world is ready for one. Thank you, Wordstream.

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