Being that I'm known in my circle of friends as something of a food lover and able cook, I often get called upon to bring contributions to communal meals or other food events. Nearly once a month, I get tapped to make a birthday dessert and so I'm always on the hunt for a quick, tasty birthday cake that doesn't come from a box. I have a go-to cake for the chocolate lovers but I've always been stymied by from scratch white cakes. They never come out quite right for me and so the search continued.
Until Saturday morning, that is. I needed to make a cake for my boyfriend's birthday party that night, and he had specifically asked for a white cake with chocolate frosting. Simple enough, right? My theory is that when you're working with such a classic combination, you have to do a really great job of it, or it's a let down. I flipped through at least six cookbooks, looking for a recipe that didn't use a pint of cream or require you to separate half a dozen eggs and beat the whites. What I ended up using was the All-Occasion Yellow Cake recipe from the Gourmet Cookbook. It is billed as being "incredibly simple" and it lived up to that promise. It came together quickly, baked up evenly, came out of the pan easily and tasted wonderful. This one is a keeper (and the recipe is after the jump).
I own several cookbooks, and I can honestly say that I like and learn something different from every single one of them, whether it's The Joy of Cooking (75th anniversary edition) or Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook or Peg Bracken's I Hate To Cook Book, there's something inside everyone that no other cookbook has, and I find that fun and interesting.
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