(Written on August 1st, 2019)
Currently I am rather tired. Rather a long day at work with various mistakes and issues with the column I was using to purify my protein.
But yesterday at 10pm I was awake!
I was talking to my mom and was reminded that my little brother’s adoption day is today and spontaneously decided to make a cake. I haven’t baked anything in a while and was practically jumping up and down ready to bake. We were in the city eating dinner with a friend so I wasn’t back home until 10pm.
I have found my new vanilla cake recipe. Thank you Molly Yeh for the inspiration to finally start this blog and for this beautiful and fast recipe- the cake was out of the oven by 11!
This is the recipe I used, but I baked the cake in a half sheet pan, making sure to line the entire bottom with parchment and oil. I find that baking in a sheet pan and then cutting out the right size circles for the cake (which I got from momofuku) is ideal for a college student who owns few cake pans.
I always have trouble with cakes being too dense, but this one is perfect- I think that using only oil (vs. butter) really kept the cake moist. Molly geniusly based the recipe on a chocolate cake, and this is the first homemade vanilla cake I’ve found that will definitely be made again.
I’m also super excited because this recipe doesn’t require a stand mixer (at least the cake part) and is thus super feasible for me to make when I’m back in the dorm.
The frosting is from this recipe for a copycat version of the whole foods chantilly cake. That cake has the lightest, not too sweet, frosting; this recipe came close but I plan to continue to experiment to find my favorite classic frosting.
Yet again, the decorations for this cake were inspired by Molly Yeh (I swear I’m not a stalker). I had some marzipan leftover from the black sesame cream puffs I made earlier this summer and colored it with my fancy Americolor gel food coloring to make some ~muted rainbow~ spheres for the top of the cake.
I also had some extra cake leftover so I made a mini personal cake for my bro- complete with natural sprinkles of course. I must say, this cake-making-experience has inspired me to make more cake in the future! Now that I have a good cake base, I can stop just making chocolate chip cookies all the time.
Sincerely, Juliet
juliet ann lee 