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Been meaning to make this, and finally decided to do it as a vehicle on which to apply Emily’s Chocolate-Caramel Fearless Baker Challenge. I’m not going to do the Caramel until tomorrow, but here’s the story of the cake!

The recipe can be found on Food & Wines’s site. I didn’t take the time to get permission to include it here, so I just linked to it! Pictures after the break…

OK. Step 1 was to gather ingredients. I already had everything except the milk chocolate, for which I paid a ridiculous price at my local natural grocery. This is the first time I’ve used MILK chocolate in a recipe. If it turns out well, I’ll use the web to find some good organic milk chocolate in far larger quantity! Here’s the first picture:

I tried to show all the ingredients in their original packaging, but I keep the salt, sugar and all purpose flour in bulk containers, so original packaging not available! All ingredients are organic – except the granulated sugar! Anyone know of a decent source of organic granulated sugar?

Next step was to turn this ingredient collection into mise en place:

I didn’t stop during prep after this, until I had all mixing done and pans prepped, with scooper ready to go. And I prepped with baking spray – SO much easier than buttering and flouring!

Sorry, but I forgot to snap one of the loaded pan. The next one I have is fresh out of the oven, in the 15 minute “in pan” cooling period:

One more picture today. 15 minutes later I turned cakes out of the pan, and placed one on a plate for illustration:

Tonight, once they’re a bit cooler, I’ll try one in it’s unadorned state. But I’ll report on that tomorrow, at the beginning of my follow up to this: Emily’s Chocolate-Caramel Challenge Entry!

Emily Luchetti is the Fearless Baker. You can find her on Twitter as @EmilyLuchetti and you can find people talking about her using the Twitter hash tag #FearlessBaker. As I hope you’re aware, her book The Fearless Baker has caused me to lose my fear of baking – precisely what she tried to do!

Note: Per my preference to preserve small, independent bookstores, I’ve linked to their collective site instead of one of the big discount sellers. You can, of course, find it at the big ones who I refuse to name, but I hope you’ll buy it from your local independent instead! If you have no local independent, I recommend calling Omnivore Books in San Francisco. They’ll happily take your credit card and ship promptly!