More whole wheat cooking

Another birthday, another cake.

This time a whole wheat chocolate cake recipe. Again, a modification. First, we started with this recipe:


WHOLE WHEAT CHOCOLATE SHEET CAKE

2 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1 c. sugar
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 c. cocoa
1 c. water
1/2 c. vegetable oil
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 c. buttermilk
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp. vanilla

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Mix flour, sugar and cinnamon together in large bowl. Bring cocoa, water and oil to boil. Pour over flour mixture and mix 1 minute. Dissolve baking soda in buttermilk; add with eggs and vanilla to mixture in bowl. Mix 2 minutes. Pour into greased and floured 10 x 15 x 1-inch jelly roll pan. Bake 20 minutes. Makes 24 servings.

Then, I left out the cinnamon (I'm aware that it would perfectly fit our culture here, but I'm not into cinnamon and chocolate together) and doubled the cocoa. It still needs more cocoa. I used buttermilk powder, because I don't use enough buttermilk to justify buying a whole container of it.

We baked two cakes, cut them in half and then made a 4 layer cake, using a chocolate ganache (made, I think, from chocolate chips and milk). We iced it with generic cool whip decorated with blue buttercream icing.

It was very rich and 4 layers was way too big. The kids couldn't eat their whole piece, even though I tried to cut small.

The secret to cooking with whole wheat flour, I've learned, is to start with the freshest flour possible. We ground this flour last night (a result of having used almost all the flour last week baking bread), it was still warm from the grinder.

Eventually, I will figure out a per item cost to my recipes.