Samantha's Wellesley Fudge Cake

A cherished tradition from Wellesley College!

There's something about September that always seems to signal a slow down in my blogging. Whether it's moving to grad school, getting married, planning a vow renewal, or just wiping myself out with an anniversary post, September just hasn't been my strongest month production wise. 

That's my way of apologizing for taking so long to get this one up, and how quickly the next post is going to follow it! I've got quite a schedule I'd like to tackle, so there's no more time to waste. And what better way to get back in action than finally getting to test out one of my favorite cookbooks properly!

American Cake by Anne Byrn is my ideal cookbook in almost every way. It's got amazing full page color photography. The book stays open without too much effort or hassle when you've got it propped on your counter or lying flat on the table, making it easy to work off of. And best of all: she actually shows her work and explains where she got her recipes from, which is almost unheard of in other historically inspired cookbooks. 

I liked the cookbook so much that my wife and I used it as our guest book for our vow renewal and reception a few weeks ago! It's been so much fun paging through that copy to see what notes people left us... quite a few requests to bake more of the cakes!

That's really the problem I had when I was first gifted this cookbook. Everything looks and sounds so good, it was really tough deciding what cake I wanted to make first. For a while, I even considered just going for it and going through the book recipe by recipe until I'd made every one in order... and then I realized that probably wasn't the best way to support my new goals of eating better and being more active. Alas! 

The Wellesley Fudge Cake caught my eye for a few reasons. First and foremost, my grandparents lived in Wellesley, Massachusetts for most of my life, and while I've only visited Wellesley College's campus a few times, it's a really beautiful suburb of Boston, and the college has got quite a history. 

Secondly, I'd already done a post about the history of fudge with Samantha earlier this year, and this recipe is definitely part of that story. Wellesley College's founder Henry Durant was famously against sweets at the women's college, and firmly believed that a good diet was vitally important to learning. He once announced that “pies, lies, and doughnuts should never have a place at Wellesley College.” 

Just like the college girls at Vassar and throughout the Northeast, Byrn explains that this cake was inspired by the fudge college students would covertly make in their college housing. A cake with thick, fudgy frosting made an appearance at a tearoom and then at the Wellesley Inn. The cake enjoyed national fame when it appeared in advertisements for Baker Chocolate Co.'s products. It's considered such a vital part of the college's history, Byrn notes, that it was included in a centennial time capsule placed in the college's library in 1981. 

My final reason for wanting to make this cake? I love chocolate, and I'm always happy to have an excuse to make a chocolate cake. 

Bryn's recipe is adapted from a cookbook that benefits the Wellesley Free Libraries. To get started, you'll want to take 4 ounces of chopped, unsweetened chocolate and 1/2 cup of water in a pan over low heat. Once the chocolate has just started to melt, whisk in 1/2 cup of sugar until smooth, and then set the mixture aside to cool.

In a medium sized bowl, combine 2 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and 1/2 of a teaspoon of salt. In another, separate bowl, combine 3/4 of a cup of room temperature butter with 1 1/2 cups of sugar and beat them until it's light and fluffy. Add two eggs to the butter and sugar one at a time, beating well after each one is added. Add the cooled chocolate and sugar mixture in and mix it all together. 

Next, add your dry ingredients alternately with 1 cup of buttermilk. When everything is combined, add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and mix everything together. 

At this point, you'll want to divide your batter between two square eight inch pans, which have been buttered and floured. You can use round pans (or hearts, or whatever else) if you'd rather, but the traditional shape is square, so that's what I went with. The cakes are baked in the oven for about 25 or 30 minutes at 350 degrees, or a little longer if your oven runs cool like mine.

Byrn instructs you to let the cakes cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes before attempting to remove them from the pan. The cakes are very soft, and I did have some tearing as I tried to take mine out, but it wasn't terribly difficult to remove them and I've definitely had cakes that are more uncooperative or fragile.

Byrn notes that the frosting she included in the book is a lighter and quicker version than the traditional frosting, and me being me, I decided I wanted to try my hand at something more "authentic." I turned to the official recipe posted by Wellesley College to make my frosting. This... probably wasn't a good idea, but the results were tasty anyway, so bear with me. 

In a large bowl, sift together 3 1/2 cups of powdered sugar with 1/2 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder. In a medium pan, combine 1/2 cup of softened butter, 1 1/2 cups of packed light brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1 cup half-and-half. Mix it together over medium-low heat until small bubbles start forming, and then cook it until the mixture thickens and becomes golden brown. This took a little longer than advertised, so I'd say just keep an eye on it and use your best judgement as to when everything's thick enough.

Get this mixture combined with 4 ounces of chopped bittersweet chocolate and 1 teaspoon vanilla, and then start adding in the dry ingredients. The recipe tells you to let this cool, and then to chill it until it gets to be a spreadable consistency, and while I do agree it needs to cool off before you can in good faith frost your cake, I'm not sure chilling it would be a great idea. 

Why?

Because this frosting was a beast to work with! Texturally, it was just very strange and didn't seem to want to act like frosting. I was also dismayed to discover while I had a lot of frosting to work with, I didn't have enough to give the cake the distinctive, uniform, thick layer of frosting. If I'd let it chill entirely, I'm fairly certain it would have just totally solidified into a block of fudge.

Despite that, the cake made a pretty attractive slice when we finally got to cut into it. 

So, final verdict?

This was a very tasty cake, but the frosting was definitely the stand out flavor. As annoying as it was to spread on the cake, and as frustrated as I got not being able to get it perfectly thick across the whole cake, the frosting really, really, really tasted exactly like fudge, especially when the cake had been chilled overnight. The cake itself was soft and very moist. It also kept really well in the fridge for days afterward, meaning I was able to share it with my coworkers despite having a crazy busy schedule and not being in the office until a few days after I'd made it. 

That said, I do think next time I might just trust Anne Byrn, the famous baker, and not go off menu for the frosting to save myself some time and frustration. The cake itself was a little involved to make, but her instructions were good and it resulted in a tasty final product, so definitely a good first stab at cooking from this book. 

Overall, this was a lot more successful than our attempt at making fudge earlier this year, and I'm pleased I finally had some time to sit down and report on it to you. This cake might not have been something Samantha ate exactly in this form as a ten year old American Girl protagonist, but if she went to a women's college like Wellesley to complete her education or explore a career, she could have been cooking up covert batches of fudge or eating cake frosted with similarly decadent chocolate bliss.

Another slice, please!