In search of the perfect macaroni and cheese: Scott's birthday dinner part 1 (Queen of Sheba cake)

     This is the first cooking blog (and indeed the first real cooking) that I have posted in a while. Scott's birthday was on monday, March 7th. Since we both decided we were too poor to eat out, I decided to cook him a very nice dinner (in a rather ironic twist, I should have just taken him out to eat as the groceries ended up costing more than the dinner would have!). Anyways, I wanted to cook him whatever his little heart desired. He decided on a meat lasagna with bison. I decided on green beans Julia Child style and kale chips and we both decided on the Queen of Sheba cake.
     As you faithful blog readers know, Scott and I have been watching Julia Child off and on since around Christmas time. About a month ago, we watched an episode that featured a delicious chocolate almond cake titled the "Queen of Sheba." We both salivated copiously and decided that this should be his birthday cake. I should say that I am not a big fan of chocolate cakes, but this cake looked like it was to die for! Here is the recipe:

Ingredients

4 oz semisweet chocolate (2/3 cup)
2 tablespoons dark rum
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup granulated sugar
3 egg yolks
3 egg whites
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 pinch salt
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/3 cup almonds (pulverized in blender or food processor with 2 tablespoons granulated sugar)
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
3/4 cup cake flour

Procedure:
1 Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Set the oven rack in lower middle level.

2 Melt the chocolate and the rum. Set aside. In a mixing bowl, cut butter into 3 pieces and cream it. When soft and fluffy, add sugar and beat 1 minute. Beat in egg yolks until well blended.

4 In another bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Beat in cream of tartar and salt and continue beating until soft peaks are formed. Gradually beat in 2 tablespoons sugar and continue beating until stiff, shiny peaks are formed. Blend melted chocolate and coffee or rum into yolk mixture, then add almonds and almond extract.

5 Stir a quarter of the egg whites into the chocolate using a rubber spatula. Scoop the rest of the whites over chocolate and, alternating with sprinkles of flour, rapidly and delicately fold in the egg whites. Turn batter into buttered and floured 8-by-1 1/2-inch round cake pan, tilting it in all directions up to the rim all around. Set in preheated oven. Bake 25 minutes.

6 Cake is done when puffed to the top and a toothpick inserted 2 to 3 inches from edge comes out clean. The center should move slightly when the pan is gently shaken. Remove pan to a rack and let cool 15 minutes. Unmold onto rack. Let cool 2 hours before storing or icing.

Chocolate Icing for Queen of Sheba cake

Ingredients:

2/3 cup melted chocolate
2 tablespoons dark rum
6 tbsp softened unsalted butter

Procedure:

Beat in butter, 1 tbsp at a time. Let it cool until you can spread it on the cake.

     I was quite nervous before I started making this cake, as I had only made a grand total of three cakes before in my entire life. The first one was from a box mix with pre-made frosting. I don't even know if you can truly count that. The next two were a carrot cake; one was made for myself and one was made for my friend Jane's birthday. Those cakes were made from scratch. This cake was more complicated than anything I had ever made before.
     Part of the expense of the groceries was just buying the materials needed to make the cake! I didn't have an 8 x 1/5" cake pan that Julia called for. After searching in two or three different stores (which only had 9" cake pans), I finally found an 8 x 2". It would have to do. The first thing you need to do is butter and flour the pan (basically butter the pan and then put flour all around and pour the excess out). The next sort of difficult part was melting the chocolate. You have to set a pan of water to a simmer (took me a while to figure out that what I thought a simmer was is indeed a simmer), take it off the heat, put a smaller pan containing the chocolate and rum into the simmering water pan and then cover it for five minutes. I couldn't quite get it to melt the way it was supposed to but fortunately had watched the show where Julia said that you could add a tablespoon of hot water in if it starts to become grainy. That did the trick.
     Okay, now comes the real trick: the beating of the egg whites without an electrical beater! I followed Julia Child's advice in The Way to Cook and prepped my bowl ahead of time with 1 tbsp of vinegar and a pinch of salt (pour the vinegar out but don't dry it all out). The egg whites have to be at room temperature. That took a while, too. Then beat and beat and beat. Add the cream of tartar in (I didn't add in the salt because it was already in the bowl), the sugar and beat and beat and beat. Fortuntaely, Scott has experience beating egg whites (from Renaissance camp's denatured proteins lesson) and was willing to tag team and help me out. Man! What a lot of work! One of the things I definitely want to get when I get married is an electrical egg beater. Whoo! The tricky thing is that when you add in the chocolate and flour and such later you have to be careful not to overmix or your cake will lose all its leavening power (since you don't add in any baking powder or baking soda). I didn't quite mix it 100% (although Julia Child said it is better to under beat than over beat) as some of the tastes were patchy in the final result (e.g., the edge tasted more almondy than the middle). This was also a result of my only having one true mixing bowl. I ended up having to mix the cake in the bowl for the salad spinner which has a slight peak on the bottom making it difficult to truly mix. Still, it came out quite delicous. I had a fun time decorating the cake as well.