I'm baking a cake for a church meeting tomorrow. It's going to be a
9x13 yellow cake, and I want a simple and easy yet good tasting
something to put on top of it.

I've often sifted 10x sugar over a cake, but I'm wondering about 10x
sugar plus powdered cocoa? Would that taste funny?

Maybe I should just put some together and taste it?

Priscilla

--
"It is very, very dangerous to treat any human, lowest
of the low even, with contempt and arrogant whatever.
The Lord takes this kind of treatment very, very personal."
- QBaal in newsgroup alt.religion.christian.episcopal

My taste would say that a frosting or icing would be better for a plain
yellow cake.

Another thing that is good is a broiler topping, it mixes brown sugar,
butter and coconut on the top of the cake and you run it throught the
broiler (carefully) until it all congeales into a delicious mess on top
of the cake. There is probably a recipe if you google it.

Priscilla Ballou wrote:

> I'm baking a cake for a church meeting tomorrow. It's going to be a
> 9x13 yellow cake, and I want a simple and easy yet good tasting
> something to put on top of it.
>
> I've often sifted 10x sugar over a cake, but I'm wondering about 10x
> sugar plus powdered cocoa? Would that taste funny?
>
> Maybe I should just put some together and taste it?

How about putting some apple slices in the bottom of the pan, sprinkling
with sugar and then pour the batter over the apples and tope with
cinnamon sugar.

here is a recipe
Broiled Coconut frosting

6 tbsp. butter, melted
2/3 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. milk
1 c. shredded coconut
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
Combine ingredients and spread over warm cake. Brown under broiler for
a few minutes.

In article >,
Priscilla Ballou > wrote:

> I'm baking a cake for a church meeting tomorrow. It's going to be a
> 9x13 yellow cake, and I want a simple and easy yet good tasting
> something to put on top of it.
>
> I've often sifted 10x sugar over a cake, but I'm wondering about 10x
> sugar plus powdered cocoa? Would that taste funny?

I've done that; tastes rather good. Even cocoa powder by itself should
be good--the sweetness of the cake should more than offset it. You could
also make a simple frosting out of the 10x sugar and some water, with or
without cocoa. If you make it liquid enough, you can drizzle it over the
cake in interesting patterns.

I don't suppose you want something like a buttercream? Pretty easy, but
of course a lot more work than just sifting sugar over the cake. The
Cake Bible has a very nice Milk Chocolate Buttercream recipe.

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In article .com>,
"bumblebee4451" > wrote:

> My taste would say that a frosting or icing would be better for a plain
> yellow cake.
>
> Another thing that is good is a broiler topping, it mixes brown sugar,
> butter and coconut on the top of the cake and you run it throught the
> broiler (carefully) until it all congeales into a delicious mess on top
> of the cake. There is probably a recipe if you google it.

Not very practical for the context.

Thanks anyway.

Priscilla

--
"It is very, very dangerous to treat any human, lowest
of the low even, with contempt and arrogant whatever.
The Lord takes this kind of treatment very, very personal."
- QBaal in newsgroup alt.religion.christian.episcopal

In article >,
Priscilla Ballou > wrote:

> I'm baking a cake for a church meeting tomorrow. It's going to be a
> 9x13 yellow cake, and I want a simple and easy yet good tasting
> something to put on top of it.
>
> I've often sifted 10x sugar over a cake, but I'm wondering about 10x
> sugar plus powdered cocoa? Would that taste funny?
>
> Maybe I should just put some together and taste it?
>
> Priscilla

My mom sprinkles the raw cake with graham cracker crumbs and some
chocolate chips then bakes as usual. It's quite good that way and less
messy for transport etc. at potlucks and the like.

marcella

In article >,
Marcella Peek > wrote:

> In article >,
> Priscilla Ballou > wrote:
>
> > I'm baking a cake for a church meeting tomorrow. It's going to be a
> > 9x13 yellow cake, and I want a simple and easy yet good tasting
> > something to put on top of it.
> >
> > I've often sifted 10x sugar over a cake, but I'm wondering about 10x
> > sugar plus powdered cocoa? Would that taste funny?
> >
> > Maybe I should just put some together and taste it?
> >
> > Priscilla
>
> My mom sprinkles the raw cake with graham cracker crumbs and some
> chocolate chips then bakes as usual. It's quite good that way and less
> messy for transport etc. at potlucks and the like.

Hmmm. Good idea. Next time I'll make sure I have graham crackers. You
may have inspired me, though. Hmmm.

Priscilla

--
"It is very, very dangerous to treat any human, lowest
of the low even, with contempt and arrogant whatever.
The Lord takes this kind of treatment very, very personal."
- QBaal in newsgroup alt.religion.christian.episcopal

In article >,
Dave Smith > wrote:

> Priscilla Ballou wrote:
>
> > I'm baking a cake for a church meeting tomorrow. It's going to be a
> > 9x13 yellow cake, and I want a simple and easy yet good tasting
> > something to put on top of it.
> >
> > I've often sifted 10x sugar over a cake, but I'm wondering about 10x
> > sugar plus powdered cocoa? Would that taste funny?
> >
> > Maybe I should just put some together and taste it?
>
> How about putting some apple slices in the bottom of the pan, sprinkling
> with sugar and then pour the batter over the apples and tope with
> cinnamon sugar.

That's a good idea, too. Not enough apples, though.

Priscilla

--
"It is very, very dangerous to treat any human, lowest
of the low even, with contempt and arrogant whatever.
The Lord takes this kind of treatment very, very personal."
- QBaal in newsgroup alt.religion.christian.episcopal

In article >,
Scott > wrote:

> In article >,
> Priscilla Ballou > wrote:
>
> > I'm baking a cake for a church meeting tomorrow. It's going to be a
> > 9x13 yellow cake, and I want a simple and easy yet good tasting
> > something to put on top of it.
> >
> > I've often sifted 10x sugar over a cake, but I'm wondering about 10x
> > sugar plus powdered cocoa? Would that taste funny?
>
> I've done that; tastes rather good. Even cocoa powder by itself should
> be good--the sweetness of the cake should more than offset it. You could
> also make a simple frosting out of the 10x sugar and some water, with or
> without cocoa. If you make it liquid enough, you can drizzle it over the
> cake in interesting patterns.
>
> I don't suppose you want something like a buttercream? Pretty easy, but
> of course a lot more work than just sifting sugar over the cake. The
> Cake Bible has a very nice Milk Chocolate Buttercream recipe.

I have a nice chocolate buttercream recipe, but transporting a frosted
cake is always iffy, I've found. I don't have a car, so I'll be either
hoofing it or taking public transportation. I was hoping for something
I could take in component ingredients and then assemble there.

The uncooked cocoa doesn't taste raw?

Priscilla

--
"It is very, very dangerous to treat any human, lowest
of the low even, with contempt and arrogant whatever.
The Lord takes this kind of treatment very, very personal."
- QBaal in newsgroup alt.religion.christian.episcopal

In article >,
Priscilla Ballou > wrote:

> I have a nice chocolate buttercream recipe, but transporting a frosted
> cake is always iffy, I've found. I don't have a car, so I'll be either
> hoofing it or taking public transportation. I was hoping for something
> I could take in component ingredients and then assemble there.

You could always make the buttercream or other frosting and bring it
along in a separate container. It'll be a minute's work to frost the
cake at your destination. Just make sure you bring a frosting knife or
good spatula.


> The uncooked cocoa doesn't taste raw?

"Raw?" I'm not sure what you mean. Cocoa doesn't need to be cooked.

Cocoa is simply chocolate with the fat removed--it tastes no more raw
then chocolate would. The only issue is that plain cocoa is somewhat
bitter, but since it's sitting on the cake, it'll acquire the cake's
sweetness. Cocoa is basically "pure" chocolate, since the chocolate
taste isn't diluted by the cocoa butter--it is therefore more intense.

Do you have any pieces of plain cake around? Sprinkle some cocoa on it
and taste.

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"Priscilla Ballou" > wrote in message
...
> In article >,
> Marcella Peek > wrote:
>
>>
>> My mom sprinkles the raw cake with graham cracker crumbs and some
>> chocolate chips then bakes as usual. It's quite good that way and less
>> messy for transport etc. at potlucks and the like.
>
> Hmmm. Good idea. Next time I'll make sure I have graham crackers. You
> may have inspired me, though. Hmmm.
>

That does sound good, and Priscilla, let us know what you did. Along the
same lines, you could sprinkle on a streusel topping before baking -- flour,
butter, brown sugar, cinnamon.

Chris

Priscilla wrote:

> I'm baking a cake for a church meeting tomorrow. It's going to be a
> 9x13 yellow cake, and I want a simple and easy yet good tasting
> something to put on top of it.
>
> I've often sifted 10x sugar over a cake, but I'm wondering about 10x
> sugar plus powdered cocoa? Would that taste funny?
>
> Maybe I should just put some together and taste it?

Depends on the cocoa: Uncooked "normal" cocoa tends to have a rather harsh
taste. Dutch-processed cocoa would be a *little* better, but I think the
best would be to get powdered chocolate. I usually see it next to the
cocoa, so it shouldn't be too hard to find; I think Ghirardelli and Nestle
both make it.

By the way, you can make the cake prettier by putting a stencil over it
before sifting the topping on. But you probably already knew that.

Bob

In > Priscilla Ballou
wrote:
> I'm baking a cake for a church meeting tomorrow. It's going to be a
> 9x13 yellow cake, and I want a simple and easy yet good tasting
> something to put on top of it.
>
> I've often sifted 10x sugar over a cake, but I'm wondering about 10x
> sugar plus powdered cocoa? Would that taste funny?
>
> Maybe I should just put some together and taste it?

Wow, I haven't made a yellow cake in years...but when I did my favorite
was vanilla butter icing with a few sprinkle dinkels on top. Not very
fancy but seems to go with the mood.


--
Cheers

Dennis

Remove 'Elle-Kabong' to reply

In article >,
"Bob" > wrote:

> Depends on the cocoa: Uncooked "normal" cocoa tends to have a rather harsh
> taste. Dutch-processed cocoa would be a *little* better, but I think the
> best would be to get powdered chocolate.

Powdered chocolate is just cocoa powder with 10x sugar. Ghirardelli's,
for example,
<http://www.ghirardelli.com/products_bakecocoa1.html>
uses Dutched cocoa, sugar, and some vanilla.

If Priscilla's combining it with powdered sugar anyway, the effect won't
be too different. And if such a relatively small quantity is going onto
an already very sweet substance that out-masses it 1000:1, there
shouldn't be any harshness.

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In article >,
"Bob" > wrote:

> Priscilla wrote:
>
> > I'm baking a cake for a church meeting tomorrow. It's going to be a
> > 9x13 yellow cake, and I want a simple and easy yet good tasting
> > something to put on top of it.
> > I've often sifted 10x sugar over a cake, but I'm wondering about 10x
> > sugar plus powdered cocoa? Would that taste funny?
> > Maybe I should just put some together and taste it?
>
> Depends on the cocoa: Uncooked "normal" cocoa tends to have a rather harsh
> taste. Dutch-processed cocoa would be a *little* better, but I think the
> best would be to get powdered chocolate. I usually see it next to the
> cocoa, so it shouldn't be too hard to find; I think Ghirardelli and Nestle
> both make it.

Good idea.

> By the way, you can make the cake prettier by putting a stencil over it
> before sifting the topping on. But you probably already knew that.

Yeah, I did. I was being lazy and trying to go with what I had in the
house.

In the end I fizzled out on baking the cake. I did make some low-carb
roll-ups (slices of ham slathered with cream cheese seasoned with dill
and garlic powder then rolled up around a dill pickle spear), since I'd
promised to bring something the low-carbers could eat, and I'm going to
cheat and go by way of the grocery store where I'll pick up a nice cake
or other pastry item. They have some decent glazed fruit piled over
custart tart-thingies that are not too bad.

Thanks for all the good ideas anyway, everyone. I still have all the
baking ingredients, so maybe I'll bake a cake for my coworkers sometime
soon. I think they look back wistfully at the days before I hit a bad
blood glucose reading and started low-carbing!

Priscilla

--
"It is very, very dangerous to treat any human, lowest
of the low even, with contempt and arrogant whatever.
The Lord takes this kind of treatment very, very personal."
- QBaal in newsgroup alt.religion.christian.episcopal

In article <ecYKd.1597$UB6.424@trnddc01>,
"Chris Neidecker" > wrote:

> "Priscilla Ballou" > wrote in message
> ...
> > In article >,
> > Marcella Peek > wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> My mom sprinkles the raw cake with graham cracker crumbs and some
> >> chocolate chips then bakes as usual. It's quite good that way and less
> >> messy for transport etc. at potlucks and the like.
> >
> > Hmmm. Good idea. Next time I'll make sure I have graham crackers. You
> > may have inspired me, though. Hmmm.
> >
>
> That does sound good, and Priscilla, let us know what you did. Along the
> same lines, you could sprinkle on a streusel topping before baking -- flour,
> butter, brown sugar, cinnamon.

Double hmmmmm! The recipe purports to be for a very moist cake, and it
sounds like it would be really good with a streusel topping.

Priscilla

--
"It is very, very dangerous to treat any human, lowest
of the low even, with contempt and arrogant whatever.
The Lord takes this kind of treatment very, very personal."
- QBaal in newsgroup alt.religion.christian.episcopal

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 21:35:06 -0500, Scott
> wrote:

>
> Do you have any pieces of plain cake around? Sprinkle some cocoa on it
> and taste.

BTW: We call that taste "bitter", not raw.

sf

On 29 Jan 2005 21:35:03 -0600, "Bob"
> wrote:

> Depends on the cocoa: Uncooked "normal" cocoa tends to have a rather harsh
> taste. Dutch-processed cocoa would be a *little* better, but I think the
> best would be to get powdered chocolate. I usually see it next to the
> cocoa, so it shouldn't be too hard to find; I think Ghirardelli and Nestle
> both make it.

I don't remember "powdered chocolate"... do you mean cocoa?

sf

sf replied:

>> Depends on the cocoa: Uncooked "normal" cocoa tends to have a rather
harsh
>> taste. Dutch-processed cocoa would be a *little* better, but I think the
>> best would be to get powdered chocolate. I usually see it next to the
>> cocoa, so it shouldn't be too hard to find; I think Ghirardelli and
Nestle
>> both make it.
>
> I don't remember "powdered chocolate"... do you mean cocoa?

Since what I wrote makes a clear distinction between cocoa (both "normal"
and Dutch-processed) and powdered chocolate, I thought it was obvious that I
*didn't* mean cocoa.

I meant powdered chocolate. Here's some being sold on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tegory=14 309

Bob

In article >,
sf > wrote:

> BTW: We call that taste "bitter", not raw.

What do you mean by "we"? The OP asked if "uncooked" chocolate tastes
raw, so it at least sounded like *she* meant "raw" rather than "bitter."

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In article >,
Scott > wrote:

> In article >,
> sf > wrote:
>
> > BTW: We call that taste "bitter", not raw.
>
> What do you mean by "we"? The OP asked if "uncooked" chocolate tastes
> raw, so it at least sounded like *she* meant "raw" rather than "bitter."

No, I asked if uncooked *cocoa* sprinkled on a cake with 10x sugar would
taste raw. I have found that uncooked cocoa tastes odd in a specific
way that I call "raw" if it is not cooked. The use of the term "raw"
comes from the requirement of its being uncooked in order to have that
taste.

Clear?

Priscilla

--
"It is very, very dangerous to treat any human, lowest
of the low even, with contempt and arrogant whatever.
The Lord takes this kind of treatment very, very personal."
- QBaal in newsgroup alt.religion.christian.episcopal

In article >,
Priscilla Ballou > wrote:

> No, I asked if uncooked *cocoa* sprinkled on a cake with 10x sugar would
> taste raw. I have found that uncooked cocoa tastes odd in a specific
> way that I call "raw" if it is not cooked. The use of the term "raw"
> comes from the requirement of its being uncooked in order to have that
> taste.
>
> Clear?

It's called a typo, as you would have seen in my original response to
your post: I wrote, "Raw?" I'm not sure what you mean. Cocoa doesn't
need to be cooked."
It doesn't matter, anyway; uncooked cocoa and uncooked chocolate taste
the same, the only difference being that chocolate also contains cocoa
butter. Products sold as powdered chocolate are really just sweetened
cocoa.

Besides, cocoa and chocolate are technically not raw at all: cocoa beans
are always roasted before processing into cocoa/chocolate. A chocolate
bar made for eating is pretty much just as uncooked as cocoa is; the
former just has sugar (and maybe vanilla and/or milk) added.

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On 30 Jan 2005 00:40:09 -0600, "Bob"
> wrote:

> I meant powdered chocolate.

You meant ground chocolate.

sf

In article >,
Scott > wrote:

> In article >,
> Priscilla Ballou > wrote:
>
> > No, I asked if uncooked *cocoa* sprinkled on a cake with 10x sugar would
> > taste raw. I have found that uncooked cocoa tastes odd in a specific
> > way that I call "raw" if it is not cooked. The use of the term "raw"
> > comes from the requirement of its being uncooked in order to have that
> > taste.
> >
> > Clear?
>
> It's called a typo, as you would have seen in my original response to
> your post: I wrote, "Raw?" I'm not sure what you mean. Cocoa doesn't
> need to be cooked."
> It doesn't matter, anyway; uncooked cocoa and uncooked chocolate taste
> the same, the only difference being that chocolate also contains cocoa
> butter. Products sold as powdered chocolate are really just sweetened
> cocoa.
>
> Besides, cocoa and chocolate are technically not raw at all: cocoa beans
> are always roasted before processing into cocoa/chocolate. A chocolate
> bar made for eating is pretty much just as uncooked as cocoa is; the
> former just has sugar (and maybe vanilla and/or milk) added.

*sigh*

Oh, never mind. After all, what do I know about my own experience,
anyway?

Priscilla

--
"It is very, very dangerous to treat any human, lowest
of the low even, with contempt and arrogant whatever.
The Lord takes this kind of treatment very, very personal."
- QBaal in newsgroup alt.religion.christian.episcopal

In article >,
Priscilla Ballou > wrote:

> Oh, never mind. After all, what do I know about my own experience,
> anyway?

Priscilla,
It's not a matter of what you know about your own experience--the issue
is the explanation for that experience. All I'd asked in my original
post was, what specifically you meant by raw. The explication was
necessary because cocoa that hasn't been cooked is the same as pretty
much any eating chocolate, with the exception of sweetness (and perhaps
fat content).

If you don't find, say, a chocolate bar to taste "raw," and the only
difference between a chocolate bar and cocoa powder is the presence of
cocoa butter and a sweetener, then the issue isn't one of cooking, and
your cake-topping question has a simpler solution.

Unsweetened chocolate (used for baking, making fudge, etc.) has
essentially the same taste as cocoa, the difference being that the
former also has a creaminess lent by the cocoa butter. But both are
somewhat harsh and bitter (very high quality chocolate will be less
harsh), though the harshness of the chocolate somewhat offset by its
creaminess. I thought that (in the case of cocoa) this harshness might
be what you might thought of as "raw." Here, for example, is a recipe
for frosting that uses cocoa, but is totally uncooked:
<http://www.recipesource.com/desserts/frosting/01/rec0136.html>
or he
<http://www.hersheys.com/recipes/recipes/detail.asp?id=67>

Both would yield a rich, tasty frosting (though I'd use a better cocoa
than Hershey's), and I would go out on a limb to say you wouldn't
consider either recipe to have the taste defect you had in mind. I could
be wrong in that assessment. It's just that chocolate is so often eaten
uncooked, even if that's not obviously the case (again, think of a
chocolate bar) that I questioned whether the issue was one of cooking
the cocoa (rather than it being sweetened).

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