Chocolate Cake for Teens

Last night was the teen cooking class, chocolate cake edition. It went really well... much better than last week's class which was a disaster.* This week, I had lots of stations laid out (dry, wet, fat, acid, loading and icing). Each teen drew a number from a hat to see which step they were in charge of... (they will fight over the best jobs if there isn't some order). They were excited about drawing numbers and being in charge of a station. Then they all got to help each other complete the cake. It was great to see them working together and hearing them talk about why we're keeping the dry ingredients separate from the wet ones.

The cupcakes came out of the oven with 10 minutes to spare. Plenty of time for icing and eating. There were a few grumbles about "I don't like cream cheese icing!" in the beginning but, wouldn't you know, every kid (but one) put icing on their cupcakes and ended up saying they preferred it that way.

Modesty aside, these cupcakes were amazing. I got the recipe from the Best American Classics cookbook. I found the recipe for the cream cheese frosting on the internet. Both were winners, especially together. And the kids loved them -- which you could tell by the batter and icing covering their faces. And the ooohs and aaahs as they bit into them.

Here are the recipes in case you'd like to give them a whirl. This has replaced my previous favorite chocolate cake recipe:



*Last week was spaghetti carbonara. I wanted them to have an alternative to spaghetti with tomato sauce, so I showed them this egg-based sauce where the heat of the cooked noodles cooks the raw egg into a creamy sauce. It would have been fine except it took 50 minutes for the water to boil. A big problem for the 50 minute class. Especially when there weren't enough steps in the recipe for 9 kids to divvy up and not be bored. Utter chaos. That said, they loved it when they ate it. And 2 out of the 9 made it at home for their families this past week! So I guess, despite the boredom, the class turned out better than I thought although I learned the important lesson of always have something for the kids to do. Boredom is trouble.