National Chocolate Cake Day

Yes, you heard me, January 27th was National Chocolate Cake Day.  I found it on the internet, http://www.757dining.com/holidays.php so it must be true! 

I have something to admit.  I like cake.  You don't see cake very often on this website, because really, who needs a cake around?  But I really like cake.  So, when I opened up Facebook on Sunday morning only to see a post by King Arthur Flour ... (See, I really am a food geek - I "liked" King Arthur Flour on Facebook!) ... about National Chocolate Cake Day I knew I had to make one.  Just a small simple cake would do. 

In fact, I'd seen a couple recipes for Chocolate Buckwheat cake and that is what I wanted.  Ironically, both of the Chocolate Buckwheat cake recipes are from my French food blog connections, therefore it must be good!

For Christmas Joe always gets me a cookbook.  This year he got a winner.  If you haven't heard of La Tartine Gourmande, you really should check out her blog, http://www.latartinegourmande.com/.  She's well known for both her pictures and her food and she's French, living in America. So with my visit to France this past year, Joe got me her book and it really is everything I loved about French food, simple, light,colorful, and flavorful.

In addition, she seems to cook mostly gluten free and has these amazing GF recipes I look forward to trying.  Unfortunately, that only works if you have the right flours and I didn't have any Buckwheat flour left in the house. So I used whole wheat pastry flour.  And thus the substituting began...

I was excited to try her recipe, but now I'd changed the flour and then, as I was gathering ingredients, I was short two eggs.  Hmmm, now it's turning into a slightly different recipe and a really small cake - but still doable!

So I cut all the measurements in half.  I gather the rest of the ingredients. And, I learn a new term, Bain-Marie.  This technique is simply the process of melting butter and chocolate over simmering water (over, never in the water).

I find my small cheesecake pan thinking that will work and it'll be easier to get it out.  Genius!

Just about 27 minutes of baking and ta-da - a CAKE!

I waited just about 5 minutes before undoing the pan and after it cooled completely I added just a little powdered sugar. 

I served it with a bit of coffee ice cream and then we had little slices left as a treat with our coffee on this Monday morning.

I'll be trying this again with the Buckwheat flour, but as is, we enjoyed it.  Joe proclaimed it moist and I liked that it wasn't too sweet. 

You can find another similar Chocolate Buckwheat cake recipe at David Lebovitz's blog, http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2013/01/buckwheat-chocolate-cake-recipe/#more-11478.  If you were reading my Paris blog posts you remember David!

Check out the list of food holidays and scope out your favorite food or drink.  I've already scoped out National Margarita Day later in February.