Chocolate Cake Recipe Makeover

Here’s something I learned this past December: in Victorian England, the end of Christmas celebrations actually fell on January 5th, or Twelfth Night, aka the last evening of the Christmas season.  The celebration included a very specific cake, called everything from Twelfth Night Cake to Plum Cake.  I would love to say that I picked up this bit of info due to a revisiting of Whistler’s works, a favorite artist who worked during the Victorian Era.  Alas, the info was gleaned last month from my annual (and first digital) advent calendar, which happened to be Victorian themed and included a daily fact about Victorian life during Christmas time.

On Twelfth Night, many Victorians threw one last party to end Christmas celebrations.    I went on the prowl for the traditional cake recipe and learned that it has lots of raisins  and is topped with copious Marzipan (adding up to a double negative in my book).  Rather than try to find an acceptable version the original cake, I opted to simply use Twelfth Night as an excuse for cake in general!

Enter this chocolate number, which hails from the Guittard Chocolate Cookbook.  The recipe in the book is a Guittard family original, hailing back to the 1800’s when Mr. Guittard first set up his chocolate shop during the Gold Rush in San Francisco.   I made a few updates in the kitchen lab, the key being substituting olive oil for butter.  The results are tremendous, with a moist, fluffy cake and helpful olive oil benefits (like reduced inflammation) to boot.  I haven’t noticed an actual olive oil flavor, the chocolate remains center stage.  There are several other healthy ingredients – whole wheat flour, pumpkin puree and yogurt.

To that end, the other key substitution I made was to use chocolate shavings in place of chocolate chips.  My goal was to have the shavings melt into the cake crumb, which they did perfectly.  I used a simple cheese tool to make the shavings.