The Best Chocolate Cake Ever

When we were kids, my sister and I loved to experiment with things. By this, I mean that we made all kinds of crazy contraptions, some that worked, and some that didn't even come close. And frankly, when I think back on some of the things we "invented", I'm surprised that we didn't kill ourselves, or at least cause some serious bodily harm to one another. (I am proud to report that Heather and I both made it through our entire childhoods with no broken bones!) I believe that we follow after my father in this regard... the experiments, I mean... as he is a true scientist at heart, and is forever plotting little (and big) experiments. Just this weekend, he was rambling on about some "test" he and my mother tried with her decades-old stainless steel pots. I think I'll spare you the details on that one....

Once upon a time, when we were about 7 and 9, Heather had the brilliant idea of gluing Lego wheels to the bottom of our tennis shoes, with the plan that we would "skate" down our steep driveway. As you can probably imagine, this idea didn't work out so well, as the little Lego wheels were pretty much crushed under our feet. Then, I had a brainstorm involving taking one of our metal patio chairs and putting each of the four legs into a skate and lashing it in as tightly as possible. This was also meant to be ridden down the same steep driveway and carefully maneuvered onto the grass at the bottom side of the hill. Of course, we didn't have any kind of steering mechanism and the skinny chair legs kept shifting around in the skates, causing the chair to tilt over and the two of us to go careening into the garage door. Once again, not very successful. Though I'm sure we provided lots of good chuckles for our neighbors...

We were a pretty persistent and creative design team however, and despite these less than successful first attempts, we did finally manage to make one "go-kart" contraption that really did work. And if my mother had been there to witness our triumphant race, she probably would have had a heart attack. Or several. Since after tasting the glory, we couldn't get enough of the wind in our hair.... This elaborate plan involved taking our father's hand-cart (or dolly, I think they're called), which could be reconfigured to make a sort-of cart which was meant to be used for doing yard work... but which turned out, with the addition of some patio furniture cushions, to make a fabulous four-wheeled racing kart! We began by "driving" it down our driveway, but this lost its thrill soon enough, so we wheeled our kart down to the nearest cross street, which happened to be a very steep street named Alta. Alta was long enough to have about a dozen or so houses on it with a sidewalk that ran the length of the street, at the end of which was a T-intersection with another, somewhat busier street....So, as I'm sure you can guess by this point, we took turns hopping into the kart and whizzing down the hill with our stomachs in our throats.... with no brakes, no steering wheel, and basically, no where to safely stop the kart, but a small patch of grass off to the side at the bottom of the hill. Just thinking about it now is enough to fill me with terror! There really are some things that parents are better off just not knowing about... at least until much, much later.

So this weekend, in the spirit of experimentation, albeit a much safer and saner brand of experimentation, my sister and I set out to test two different versions of the same recipe. I must give Heather full credit on the discovering of this recipe, since she first heard about it on NPR. The recipe is for Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Guinness Cake and it is out of this world! At this point, I would venture to say that it is my favorite chocolate cake recipe ever. And as someone who likes to bake, I think that is saying alot. Heather recently made this cake for my father's birthday celebration and after tasting and falling in love with it, I decided I needed the recipe too. (If I was being completely honest, I would have to admit that I could not stop thinking about this cake!) So I started looking around online and realized there are actually two versions of this cake, the original from Nigella's website, which I'll call the British version, and the recipe that Heather first used that was posted on the NPR website, which I'll call the American version. The interesting thing about this is that the British version is in metric units, such as grams, milliliters, etc., while the American version is in our standard baking measurements of cups and teaspoons and the converted measurements, while close, were not exactly the same. (The amount of butter used in the British version is almost double that used in the American version!). So you can see why we just had to have a true test kitchen experiment and bake one from each recipe, followed by a taste test. Which is exactly what we did... complete with our kitchen scales and a calculator, and our mother as sous-chef, since she's pretty handy in the kitchen herself...

And the winner??? Well, I think that the final tally put the British version ahead by just a smidgen. However, with only six taste testers, there is probably a pretty big margin of error as far as scientific data goes! Plus, I might have been a little biased towards the British version, since that is the version I chose to bake... and even though it wasn't a competition, I might have been just a little jealous that my sister was the first one to discover this fabulous recipe. And what would the Stumptown Sisters' Test Kitchen be without a little friendly competition?!

I highly recommend that you find some occasion for which you can bake this delicious cake as soon as possible! Trust us, you will be glad you did. It is so easy to make, and you will get rave reviews from friends and family, no matter which version you choose to make. I think it just might become your favorite chocolate cake recipe too!

Enjoy!
-Colleen