Chen's Chocolate Tweed Cake

Family Dessert Recipes

1/2 c. butter 1 c. sugar, divided 1 tsp. vanilla 2 1/4 c. cake flour 3 tsp. baking powder 1/2 tsp. salt 1 c. milk 4 egg whites 3 oz. unsweetened chocolate Frosting: 3/4 c. butter 1/2 c. Egg Beaters or other egg substitute 2 1/4 c. powdered sugar or icing sugar

Cream butter with 1/2 c. sugar. Add vanilla. Sift cake flour with baking powder and salt. On Cake Flour: To substitute all-purpose flour for cake flour, measure out all purpose and subtract 1 Tbsp. for each 1/2 cup. Add flour mixture to batter alternately with milk. In a separate, chilled metal bowl, beat egg whites, adding remaining sugar, 1 Tbsp. at a time. Beat to soft peaks. On Soft Peaks: Lift the beaters out of the egg whites. If the whites lift up into a cone shape and the tip immediately flops over so that it looks like a Dairy Queen ice cream cone, that's soft peaks. Grate chocolate. Grating the chocolate creates static electricity. The chocolate shavings will stick to the side of the bowl, the counter, your spoon. Fold the grated chocolate into the batter. Gently fold in egg whites. Divide batter between two 8-inch pans. Bake at 350 degrees F until cake pulls slightly away from edges of pan, about 20-25 min. Cool in pans ten minutes, then turn out and cool completely before frosting. Frosting: Cream butter, Egg Beaters, and powdered sugar until the mixture is of spreadable consistency. Editor's note: This is a very old family recipe that I've updated. (The original recipe called for the beaten egg whites to do most of the leavening, and for the leftover raw egg yolks in the frosting.) It is always a crowd pleaser. The tiny flakes of chocolate in the silvery batter don't quite melt, which gives the cake its speckled, tweedy look, set off by the creamy buttery yellow of the frosting. You could probably imitate the effect with tiny chocolate chips, but the unsweetened chocolate gives the cake a sophisticated dark chocolate flavor whose equal I've never tasted.

Submitted by Gretchen Grant
Contributed on: Friday May 28th, 2004 and modified on Sunday November 5th, 2006