Sweet Eats:: Martha's Cocoa Buttermilk Cake

"This is my kinda cake... it hugs the heart & makes it warm by wrapping it in a thick film of butter. I can feel it snuggled around my aorta" ~ my brother-in-law

All this lyrical description was brought on by a slice of Martha Stewart's June Cake, a Cocoa Buttermilk offering with scrolled tuiles. If dense, rich, chocolatey & buttery is your idea of dessert heaven, then this one is for you...

It has been pretty cold around here, being winter and all... so we found that butter just doesn't soften. We sliced it up into small chunks to aid the process. But still to no avail after 30 mins or so. So we decided to measure out all the ingredients and put them in little containers to kill some more time. Still no softening. So I created a steam bath ... the butter had 5 mins at the spa!


Did I mention there was a whole lot of butter in this recipe... seems to be a theme of Martha's Year of Cakes!

The bottom chunks started to melt... and we didn't want that, so we quickly whipped it off. Most of the chunks weren't soft yet but we didn't have time to waste (could this be because Nicky & I had spent the morning at a fabric sale!) & had to use them a bit hard anyways.

We didn't really have any dramas with this cake (unlike other months)... just a bit of buttermilk spillage.


A whole lot of chocolate...


Alot of frosting action...


I thought the tuiles were the best bit. I am not sure how people do this on their own. We found that if you even left them for half a minute they would cease up and crumble when you try to roll them. As soon as the baking tray hit the bench Nicky was in with the spatula lifting the edges. I didn't even wait til she had got the whole thing loosened before I was grabbing & pulling them off to wrap around the rolling pin. Asbestos hands is what you need! Insert sounds effects like "yikes" & "ouch" in here!

For us it turned out to be a bit of a boy's cake. Whilst we were picking at the crumbs... Nicky's husband has been eating it for breakfast (usually it is biscuits!) & my boy has been hankering for more frosting between the layers! He must be crazy, or something is going on with his palate, but he insists that he needs the balance, equal cake to frosting! I was scrapping the stuff off!

Last month's cake we timed for Mother's Day & this month we used it as a birthday cake, as did another. Kill 2 birds with one cake and all that.

Here is Martha's version:


Our grown ups version:


And the kid's version for my niece...


I think it looks a bit scrap booking for my taste, but I was tired and didn't have it in me to create more decorations.

Easy peasy (I hope) pound cakes this month! Yay! Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any events on our calendar, we might just have to eat them all ourselves! T

P.S Check out others who have made this cake here. Four of us seem to be keeping the challenge alive so far!