I, a former baker, tried Ina Garten’s most popular cake recipe and now I’m happy.
If you’re an Ina Garten fan, you’re probably familiar with at least a handful of her most popular recipes. There’s Chicken Marbella, Giant Cosmopolitan, and Chicken Betrothal. But, reader, have you heard of Beatty’s Chocolate Cake?
While I can’t provide quantitative evidence, this legendary cake is arguably one of Ms. Garten’s most popular baking recipes. It repeatedly appears on lists of the Barefoot Contessa’s most beloved dishes. So it was only natural that I, a former pastry chef and food writer, had to try it for myself. Here’s my full review.
This is the most important thing to do before you start cooking… anything.
The recipe
Beatty’s chocolate cake recipe, although available on the Barefoot Contessa website, originally comes from her fifth cookbook, The Barefoot Countess at Home. It is described as an “intermediate” difficulty level. Right off the bat, I didn’t have the two 8-inch cake pans needed to make the classic layer cake. I didn’t even have Aso i thought i would go with the cupcake option. This is where i think i went astray.
Preparing the cake
Katherine Gillen
This is a pretty standard cake recipe: you mix the dry ingredients, the wet ingredients, all with an electric mixer and bake. But Ina likes to add a little “Ina” twist, so there’s a full cup of freshly brewed coffee in the batter (to boost the cocoa flavor). It was runny, so I thought I’d pour it into the cupcake liners with a liquid measuring cup. Then I realized I’d have to do this 24 times… so I pulled out my 9-inch cake pan after 12 cupcakes and prayed to the cake gods that it would turn out well. (At this point, I knew I wouldn’t be serving this cake to anyone but myself…) It did, and I think you could use two 9-inch pans with success, too.
One thing about Ina that has always intrigued me is that she love to call for extra-large eggs in her baking recipes. Why? Why, Ina?! Listen to me: you don’t need them. Now write down this rule about egg size: in a recipe that calls for one or two eggs, you can use either large or extra-large eggs. You’re welcome.
Katherine Gillen
I thought everything was fine until I took the cupcakes out of the oven. They looked delicious, but everywhere the tops touched the pan, they were hopelessly stuck together—yes, even with paper liners. Don’t make my mistake; grease your cake pans (and don’t fill your cupcakes more than two-thirds full).
Katherine Gillen
Finally, it was time to frost. If you know anything about frosting, this one was like an American chocolate buttercream with, as Ina would say, “the volume turned up.” Yes, it contains instant coffee powder to enhance the chocolate and temper the sweetness, but it also contains (interestingly) a raw egg yolk. There’s a reason Ina doesn’t add extra steps to her recipes if she doesn’t think they’re essential. And while I’m sure you could omit this little detail (for those who can’t eat raw eggs), the effect is a frosting that’s noticeably richer and silkier than a typical buttercream and powdered sugar frosting. And unlike most American buttercreams that form a hard crust when left out in the open, this one stayed soft and fluffy all afternoon while I waited for the cakes to cool.
The final verdict
Between the cake pans, the collage, and the eggs, I was ready to hate Beatty’s chocolate cake out of spite. But here’s what I noticed when I went to taste it:
So, I didn’t just make a great chocolate cake! I learned a few things about myself: I love shortcuts in baking, I don’t like it when my shortcuts lead to bad results, and I would never admit that these two traits are at odds with each other. So I’m basically fulfilled now. Thanks, Ina!
Ina Garten has over 50 chicken recipes, and they all have three things in common
