Hi guys. Iām Emily Carter, and on this AJ Zorvella Bakes, we’re making a chocolate chip cake so let’s get
started and First off set that oven to 350 and let’s grab some cake pans you can use three six inch pans or two eight inch pans it’s up to you i’m using three six inch pans because i haven’t made a cute little cake in so long so we’re gonna start off with two and a half cups or 280 grams of all-purpose flour three quarters of a teaspoon of salt and if you’re using a fine-grained salt use less because that’s going to make a salty cake i’m also going to use two and a quarter teaspoons of baking powder one two and three oh my gosh nothing’s wrong i just realized that we’re making a chocolate chip cake where are the chocolate chips.
I’m gonna whisk this up first and then grab them oh my gosh i was even in that cabinet so give this a whisk
you really want to distribute the baking powder the salt too but the baking powder is so important because you could have like a very lumpy or an even cake okay whisk whisk whisk whisk whisk we’re going to set this aside and grab those chocolate chips Okay back to baking i have my chocolate chips we’re gonna set those aside they get added towards the end right .
We’re gonna grab our mixer stand mixer for me you could use a hand mixer if you want so this recipe has
three quarters of a cup or 170 grams of room temperature butter unsalted if you really want to use salted
butter you can do that just reduce the amount of salt that you added earlier by like half a teaspoon always
cream your butter first because you want to give it always lock your stand mixer first because you don’t want that to happen now we’re going to cream our butter.
Why is that happening that butter might be a little harder in the center and you just don’t want it to like not mix so creaming your butter at the beginning just makes sure everything is broken up and ready to go i don’t want to measure the sugar out with measuring cups so we’re using one and two-thirds cups of granulated sugar go ahead and uh measure that up that’s 333 grams we’re gonna mix this up on high for like three to four minutes until it is light and fluffy i’m using a whisk attachment so we’re gonna beat a lot of air into that butter and sugar for a fluffy melt-in-your-mouth cake While that’s mixing i’m gonna measure out one cup of buttermilk.
I’m also going to scrape the bowl down right now it’s time to add two teaspoons of a nice vanilla so there you go three eggs one at a time no shells okay so we’ve reached that point in mixing where it’s like very soupy and eggy on the inside but the outside is totally just sugar and butter so we need to mix this up so it’s nice and homogeneous that just means that no matter where you are in the batter every bit is exactly the same all those little lumps are going to disappear now.
It’s going to be perfect Okay this is just about ready but we’re gonna do one thing for the chocolate chips these are gonna taste so good like just gooey still like slightly molten all right i want about one cup of these chocolate chips what’s gonna happen is these are gonna go into a little bowl and i’m gonna take maybe a tablespoon of the flour mixture here and then just give these what give these a little toss i’ll do this the safe way mix mix mix just to coat them in a little bit of flour and that’ll help them kind of get suspended basically just like a bird puffs up its feathers to trap warm air or you use a down like a puffy jacket uh this is the same deal little bits of air will be trapped with the flower then they won’t all sink which is nice.
While mixing on low we’re gonna add the dry in three batches alternating with the wet so mix on low like a little bit less than a cup of the flour mixture add that in half of the buttermilk some more flour the remaining buttermilk oh there’s a chocolate chip in there i was like laughing it’s not mixed in there are still pockets of flour hanging around here and there I’m going to finish this off by hand so if you look inside there’s it’s not mixede what i want to do is just use this whisk and fold it together a bit and then when it’s almost there we’re going to add those amazing chocolate chips in that’s an asmr moment and you want i’m going to fold this in with a spatula you really want to be gentle with your batter right now overmixing is the enemy so just fold in your chocolate chips right now and try and get them evenly distributed that looks really nice.
One thing i like to do which is totally not necessary is i just like to weigh each cake layer out that way i know that there’s gonna be nice and perfect when you cut into it if you don’t want to do that it’s fine just use a skewer and see how deep it is and or use your like hands and say hmm right all right so that’s about 430 ish grams per cake pan almost ready for the oven but we’re gonna pop those cake strips on i did not forget about them squeeze out the excess water squeeze out the excess air squeeze the air out under water and then you wring them out so they’re really just damp and you can make your own at home you don’t buy them it’s like a really fun project if you know how to sew.
My cakes are ready to go into the oven 350 center rack for about half an hour you can check and know they’re done because the centers will spring back a skewer will come out clean and you know also the edge will pull away all those things say i’m done While your cake’s baking or even cooling it’s time to make a delicious creamy vanilla frosting with those amazing chocolate chips i’m gonna add three sticks which is one and a half cups of butter grams will be below 113 times three is 339 339 grams add a paddle attachment and i’m going to cream this butter up first just to make sure it’s nice and just like smooth with no little hard parts left over okay so cream that butter .
while it’s just mixing away we’re gonna sift out five cups of powdered sugar it’s like a lot of times you don’t have to sift out your powdered sugar but here’s the butt um i’m going to use a piping tip for the top of the cake and i don’t want to have any like bad moments i want to have beautiful dollops on top so just sift it out just in case there’s any rocky bits in your powdered sugar big lumps not cool that was would have clogged my piping
tip.
The butter is nice and creamy i’m going to add in the powdered sugar like a few cups at a time also just scrape the bowl down before you even start mixing otherwise you’re just gonna have like butter on the bottom but if you give it a scrape first it really helps things out while it mixes in you can drizzle in some creamer milk about a quarter of a cup will definitely do the trick and we can also add two teaspoons of nice vanilla vanilla chocolate they go hand in hand this smells amazing but right now we’re going to add the remaining powdered sugar okay.
i’m always waiting for breakfast oh and last but not least we’re gonna add in a quarter teaspoon it’s like a good pinch or two of salt it’ll just help give some contrast and balance to this uh frosting mix on low if you go high what’s gonna happen is the frosting’s gonna get a lot of air beaten into it which is fine but if you’re decorating a cake what happens is that you get little tiny air bubbles so if you ever had a cake and you’re like trying to smooth it out it’s like bubbles bubbles bubbles everywhere it’s because the frosting was beaten up and it got a lot of air whipped into it.
Let’s take a look at this that looks nice and creamy i think that’s great i’m going to take out about half a cup maybe a little bit more those are for my dollops at the very end right now we’re going to want about a cup of chocolate chips this is a really nice moment just to have kind of a contrast to that creamy vanilla frosting you’re going to like just bite into some delicious chocolate and that with the melt in your mouth cake and the gooey chocolate chips that were in the cake is this going to be like a lot of textures and delicious flavors so go ahead and add these in lock it off and we’re going to mix this in just so they’re really well distributed there that looks great okay.
The neat thing is that when i smooth this frosting out you’re gonna see the chocolate chips come through it’s gonna be really pretty Okay let’s get those cakes and start decorating these little guys spent 35 minutes in the oven and now we’re going to pop them out you can see the edge pulled away from the pan and they’re super flat because of those baking strips okay think of dots that’s nice so pretty all those chocolate chips there we go these are going to cool down then they’re going to get decorated really quickly.
First cake layer down actually i’m just going to put a dollop of frosting on the bottom so it doesn’t slide i kind of need two hands for this uh all right listen to spread maybe like a quarter cup or so of this frosting maybe a third of a cup the nice thing is the chocolate chips kind of tell you how thick the frosting is going to be so just spread it and it’s done smooth that frosting out one more layer on top i love the proportion of the three layer six inch cake it’s like very stately without being like so gigantic that you’re trying to invite people over to finish off this massive cake it’s like oh the cake for the family all right.
i’m going to cover that top layer in frosting it’s piping out really nicely then i’m going to cover the side and smoothing is going to be interesting with the chocolate chips but because the frosting is so creamy it’ll be really easy that’s the thing about decorating cakes it always seems intimidating at first like you start doing like oh this how it’s supposed to be but then it works out Now we’re gonna do the side here’s the deal you want to smooth it out like top to bottom a bit so get a nice.
Thin layer going this is very relaxing just covering your cake and frosting it’s a little bit leany that’s okay part of that is evening the frosting out part of that was the cake was actually tilting so right now i’m going to use the bench scraper and drag it along the edge this is the part where you’re exposing all those.amazing chocolate chips and if you see any problems don’t worry because this is just like the first layer of decoration is like the base of our canvas okay here’s the deal this gets a chocolate chip skirt it’s really fun so you just it just gives it some more contrast just like that and then i’m gonna poke a few in strategically so it has like an ombre skirt effect of like a chocolate gradient.
Now we’re gonna pipe those dollops on just big beautiful dollops on top nice and clean buttercream so have a nice contrast for the cake and finish it off like a beautiful finial pure concentration right now i love it it’s like bringing back all these memories of some of the cakes i used to enjoy ah look at that is so good the cake melts in your mouth oh you’ve got to make this cake if you like this recipe.
