- Today, we're gonna make my
cinnamon chocolate chip cake,
along with a brown sugar
cinnamon cream cheese frosting.
It's amazing, you're gonna love it.
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so you don't miss anything.
And let's get started.
(upbeat music)
Now, this cinnamon chocolate chip recipe
is my second favorite cake recipe to make.
My first of course, is my chocolate cake
and I have a link for
that, you can click on it
right over here or in the description box.
I'll have a link to that video as well.
So, cinnamon chocolate chip,
if you're looking at the recipe
and you're reading it you're goin',
this sounds a little bit strange,
the ratio seems a little bit off
but I promise it works.
And I'm including the
regular recipe for sea level
as well as high altitude adjustments.
So if you live very high
altitudes, like I do,
you can still have a cake
outcome that turns out amazing.
Now, the recipe is down
below in the description box,
click the show more button or of course,
you can click over to my
website, ashleemarie.com,
and the recipe is there as well.
So, lets get started
with this cake recipe.
First off, a lot of flour,
a lot of brown sugar,
and finally some cinnamon.
Now obviously, I have a ginormous mixer,
which works really well
for these super big batches
when I'm making big amounts of cake.
If you do not want to make a huge cake,
you're looking for something
a little bit more standard size.
This recipe cuts really
nicely down three quarters,
or half or one quarter.
It divides by four really nicely.
Now we're gonna add cold
butter cut into pieces,
and we're gonna mix it up.
So basically, this is not
like any other cake recipe,
instead of nice softened
butter this butter is cold,
instead of beating the
butter all the way in
and incorporating butter
and sugar and creaming it,
we're actually, it's more like a pastry
where we're cutting the
butter in with the beaters.
And it's like pea-sized chunks
and just wait til you see what comes next.
Now we're going to add
the eggs, one at a time.
And I'm beating in between.
Did you know the difference
between baking soda
and baking powder is that
baking powder is baking soda
with cream of tartar in it.
And the reason for that
is the cream of tartar
helps balance out the
bitterness of the baking soda
turning it into a baking
powder that you can work with
in baked goods without having
to add any extra acidity.
So if a recipe calls for
baking powder or baking soda
make sure that you use
the right ones cause
they're balanced that way for a reason.
Now most cakes call for
baking powder cause most cakes
don't have extra acidity in them.
This cake actually calls
for baking soda and
we're mixing it in with some sour cream.
We're gonna mix these
together and it's gonna have
this awesome chemical reaction and
it's really fun to watch.
And then we're gonna let it
sit for about two minutes
to let it start it's reaction.
Now you wanna make sure
that you're using a bowl
much bigger than the sour cream
because this is gonna grow.
Look how much it's grown!
It's huge!
And now we're gonna add it in to the mixer
along with some milk and mix.
Very last ingredients,
the mini chocolate chips.
And the batter's done.
It's time to prepare our
pans but before we do that
just a really quick note.
You'll notice this is
a really thick batter
and it's a massive amount of batter
and it's not a massive
amount of baking soda.
This is going to be a more dense cake
like I mentioned earlier,
it's not going to rise
quite as much as maybe
a more traditional cake
that you're thinking of.
I've prepared my pan by spraying the sides
and then put a parchment
paper circle on the bottom.
Now typically I use this
massive amount of batter
to do a three layer eight
or nine inch cake and
it works beautifully.
But I wanted to go for
a little bit more hype
so today I'm switching it up.
I'm going with some seven inch pans
and I'm gonna use four
instead of my typical three.
Evenly divide the batter
among whatever pans
you've chosen to use.
Then spread it as smooth as you can.
And then we're gonna bake em.
Now to bake as flat as possible,
I not only adjust for my altitude,
but I also use these Bake-Even strips.
Now this bakes a little
bit lower and longer.
Bakes at 325 for about an hour.
Now you need to make sure
that you're making adjustments
in temperature and length
of time for high altitudes.
The notes are down below as well.
Now with this cake it's a
little bit harder to tell
when it's done because if
you stick a cake tester in it
and pull it out you're
actually gonna come out with
a lot of melted chocolate from all
of those mini chocolate chips.
Once there's no longer (mumbling)
you wanna just touch, very
lightly, the top of the cake
and if it stays indented
it's still a little bit raw,
needs to cook a little bit longer.
If it bounces back, it's done.
The other way you can tell
is it'll start pulling away
from the sides a little bit.
You will notice it's also a lot darker
than you would expect a cake to get.
I promise it's not burnt.
The outer edges just get
really dark on this one.
But that's fine cause
we're gonna level this.
You'll also notice the
outside gets a lot harder
than a lot of other cakes but the inside
is so soft and delicious.
For cake leveling, use a
really sharp serrated knife
and a good turn table.
So you don't need to press too hard.
We just want to make a little cut
and when you get all the way around
your cut lines should
meet up and if they do
then you know you have a nice even level.
And you can actually then
start putting a little
bit of pressure in the knife.
Just let the turn table
really do the work for you.
But look at the inside,
how soft and moist that is.
This is still warm with
those chocolate chips.
Now for some cakes I
only level the top but
for this one I level the bottom as well.
Now because the bottom is perfectly flat
and doesn't have any dips in
it like the top might have
you can actually go with
a really shallow cut.
See, super thin.
Now you can frost this cake
with pretty much any frosting.
A chocolate ganache, a
chocolate ganache buttercream,
chocolate buttercream,
cream cheese frosting,
chocolate cream cheese
frosting, really the
possibilities are endless.
A lot of flavors go with
this cake really well.
Today I'm going to make my
brown sugar buttercream.
Now brown sugar is
pretty granular compared
to powdered sugar that you
typically use in frostings
and icings and stuff like that.
So what we need to do is
get these grains smaller.
So one option is to run it
through your food processor
and turn it into brown powdered sugar
but that takes a really
strong food processor
and can take a long time.
And it's hard to do in small batches.
You've got to do like medium sized batch
for that to work really well.
The other option is you
can dissolve the sugar
by melting it in some way.
So that's what I'm gonna do.
I'm going to take some
butter and the brown sugar,
then we're going to microwave and melt it.
Now you don't want to boil it for too long
whether you're using the
microwave or the stove top
because then it will start to
turn into butterscotch syrup
and we don't want it to
go even further and turn
into toffee, of course.
So you just, you want it
to stay nice and liquidy,
not get too hot, but mostly melted.
This is still just a little bit grainy
but it's not too bad.
Now we want to set it aside
and let it cool completely.
I'll actually usually do this
while the cakes are cooking
so that it can cool completely
to room temperature before
we start making our frosting
cause what you don't wanna do
is add warm butter and
sugar to a frosting that's
not like a meringue or
something like that.
This'll just melt the
frosting and you'll be
left with a mushy mess.
Now that's it's cooled down,
it's nice and thick and
we're ready to move on with our frosting.
First thing we're gonna
do is add cream cheese.
This is gonna add a lovely
flavor and creaminess
to this frosting.
Now we're gonna add the brown sugar.
And then add your vanilla and beat it.
Now that that's done beating
and it's nice and creamy
we're gonna add our powdered sugar.
Keep adding powdered sugar
little by little until
you're happy with the consistency.
And we're gonna add some cinnamon.
And beat.
And look how great that
final texture looks.
Now comes the fun part, we're
going to frost the cake.
(upbeat music)
And the final layer.
And then frost the sides.
Once you have a nice thick
layer of frosting on your cake,
you can either leave it
rough or you can use any
straight edged tool like
this to smooth it out.
Now our cake's frosted and
it's time to decorate it.
This is where the fun really begins.
This is where you can do
anything that you want.
Sometimes I'll just re-frost
it and leave it just like that.
Today we're gonna go a little
bit fancier just for fun.
So I have a mixture of
mini chocolate chips
as well as mini cinnamon
chips which are awesome
and they're totally cute
and we're gonna put it on
the side of the cake.
And now we're gonna add a drip all
around the top of the cake.
So this is a chocolate ganache
which is one part chocolate
and one part cream for a drip ratio.
If you're making a frosting,
it's a little bit different.
Add more ganache to the top and
then we're gonna smooth it out.
Now I'm gonna take those cinnamon chips
and mini chocolate chips and
put em around the top edge.
Easy peasy, decorating is done.
Now let's slice inside and see the cake.
So you can see the denseness of this cake.
My kids call it the cookie
cake although I've already
made a cookie cake out of actual cookies.
That's also on my site.
You can check that out here.
This one's definitely
more cake like than cookie
but it does have that wonderful flavor.
And now the best part, get to try it!
I love this cake!
It's dense but it's still
moist and it's full of flavor.
It tastes amazing with a
ton of different frostings
so you don't have to stick
with this one if you have
something else that you really love.
In the comments, I'd love
to hear if you try this cake
and what you think.
Also if you have another
suggestion for me,
of a recipe or a cake that
you'd like to see here on
the channel.
As always I hope you enjoyed this and
thanks so much for watching!
