Hungry Bear and I love good old-fashioned chocolate cake. Nothing beats a moist, tender and airy piece of chocolate cake for dessert. The hard part is finding a recipe that has the right cake texture, chocolate flavor and sweetness level.

Last week, we were watching an episode of the Barefoot Contessa in which Ina Garten made a great looking chocolate cake. It looked so good, I had to give it a try. Hungry Bear's birthday was in a few days, so I decided to make it for her birthday.

The chocolate cake recipe produced a super moist cake due to all the liquids in the batter — 1 cup buttermilk, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 1 cup hot coffee. With all the liquids, the batter was the runniest cake batter I've ever made. The frosting was a simple chocolate buttercream. Since we like intense chocolate flavors, I substituted bittersweet chocolate for the semisweet called for in the recipe and added an extra ounce of chocolate. And of course, I used Scharffen Berger chocolate and cocoa powder.

Hungry Bear and I love cupcakes, but I think our friend, Aimee, is a bigger cupcake fanatic. Last month while visiting Jeff and Aimee in NYC, Aimee organized a cupcake tasting tour around five popular cupcake shops in the city. We even had a scorecard, created by Jeff, to rate the shops and keep our tasting notes.

Since we all love chocolate, and to fairly rate the cupcake shops, we agreed to taste the chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting at each store. It was acceptable, and our duty, to sample the other cupcake flavors, but the chocolate chocolate cupcake was a mandatory tasting. We also decided to prevent over eating by sharing cupcakes.

We started the cupcake tour at 4:00 PM on a warm Friday afternoon at Harlem's Make My Cake, excited and full of energy. The plan was to head south and end the tour at Magnolia Bakery in the West Village. After splitting a few large cupcakes at Make My Cake, we were all on a sugar high and headed to Crumbs Bake Shop.

After only two stops on the tour, we all hit the sugar wall and started to feel sluggish. Aimee had skipped lunch and wanted some real food. Hungry Bear and I needed something savory to settle our stomachs. Conveniently for us, we passed Gray's Papaya on our way to Buttercup. To re-energize for the second half the tour, we proceeded to each eat a hot dog at Gray's Papaya. It wasn't the healthiest thing, but we were on a cupcake tasting tour, so healthy food choices were not on the agenda.

Buttercup Bake Shop was the next destination. It was a highly anticipated spot based on its history and high rankings on all NYC cupcakery lists. At this point, there were concerns by some participants whether we would be able to complete all five tour stops that day.

We were at 72nd street and the next stop on the tour was Cupcake Cafe on 40th street. We literally stumbled the thirty two blocks down to Cupcake Cafe and barely beat the 7:00 PM closing time. After sharing a few more cupcakes, we had to call it a night. We were all tired and incoherent from all of our cupcake eating. Jeff said he felt like he had been drinking all day.

On our way back to Columbus Circle, we grabbed a Philly cheese steak and half a pizza for dinner... yes, dinner. Even though we were full of sugary cupcakes, we were still a little hungry. And believe it or not, we all felt better after ingesting some protein. Feeling better was short lived, as we all passed out by 9:00 PM while watching the Dog Whisperer on TV. The night ended with Aimee declaring that she would not eat cupcakes again for a long time.

A long time in Aimee's world must mean a couple of days, because only two days later with her relentless pressure, we completed the tour by queuing up at Magnolia Bakery. It was a strange experience at Magnolia's. First we had to wait in line before the cupcake shop bouncer let us in. Next, everyone in the shop grabs their own cupcakes in the window display and then lines up to pay. It appears to be a very inefficient process, but who's to argue with the mother of all cupcake shops.

Ratings

After reviewing the tasting notes and with careful consideration, I present to you our 2007 NYC Cupcake Tasting Tour rankings. The ratings are only from the participants who tasted cupcakes at all five bakeries.

Cupcake Tour Rankings (1 = Best, 5 = Worst)

There was no clear winner on this tour. Cupcake tasting and judging is very subjective and comes down to your preferences between the cake part and the frosting. Hungry Bear and I use the cake as the main rating criteria. We believe the frosting is there to compliment and enhance the cake, but not to over power it. With that in mind, we both chose Crumbs Bake Shop as the best cupcake shop on our tour. We thought that Crumbs had the best cake in terms of texture, moisture and chocolate taste.

Jeff favors the frosting flavor and the moistness of the cake. He is also values aesthetically pleasing cupcakes. Aimee considers the cake and the frosting equally important. However, she doesn't like cupcakes that are overloaded with frosting. Another key factor for Aimee is the coldness of the cupcake. She prefers cold, refrigerated cupcakes for some strange reason. Interestingly, both Jeff and Aimee chose Cupcake Cafe as their favorite bakery. They serve cold cupcakes.

The clear loser in this cupcake tour was Buttercup Bake Shop. It was the lowest ranked bakery across the board. Maybe it's just the 72nd street location, but the cake was dry and lacked any flavor. The killer was the overload of frosting, which was too sweet. The shop was a big disappointment given all of its hype.

We all agreed that Cupcake Cafe had the prettiest looking cupcakes and that Buttercup Bake Shop should not be on the list of on any future cupcake tasting tours. I find it interesting that given our different judging criteria and tastes, we all ranked Make My Cake as our number two shop. I'm concluding that this shop has the best combination of good cake and frosting.

Tips

The cupcake tour was very fun and the highlight of our visit to NYC. It's a great activity for people of all ages. I highly recommend conducting your own cupcake eating tour in NYC or your favorite city. Here are some tips if you plan on going on a cupcake tasting tour.

• Map out the shops and route in advance. If you are walking, the last stop should be the cupcake shop closest to your home. Walking long distances with a cupcake buzz is not fun.
• Keep a scorecard and notes. After a few cupcakes and the sugar high and crash, you'll forget everything if you don't take notes.
• No matter how hungry you are, make sure you share cupcakes, especially the large ones. I would recommend splitting large cupcakes into six portions. You'll pay the price if you don't limit your cupcake intake.
• Start early and plan the day around the cupcake tour. Visit other attractions on the route to pace your cupcake eating. Also, sprinkle in a few savory food stops between the cupcake shops. Your stomach will thank you for the salty snacks and protein.
• Don't start the day by eating baked French toast casserole, followed by a three-course lunch at Le Cirque, before your cupcake tour!

Tour Participants: Aimee, Jeff, Ava, Hungry Bear, Chuck, Kurt, Craig, Nicole

As I mentioned in the last post, our friend Jane made chocolate devil's food cupcakes for dessert last Sunday. She has made these cupcakes for us in the past and we love them. Jane uses a devil's food cupcake recipe from the Food Network. The cocoa powder and chocolate brand used is Valrhona, so the cupcakes are pure chocolate delights.

In the process of making the ganache, Jane overheated her cream and broke it. The chocolate separated and became grainy, then I made it worse by overheating it more. None of us had broken a ganache before, so we were at a loss on how to fix it. Fortunately, we were able to find a remedy from The Secrets of Baking...

If your ganache looks broken or feels grainy, there is still hope for it. To repair a broken ganache, divide it in half. Warm one half over a double boiler to a temperature of 130 degrees F. The fat will melt and pool at this temperature, making the mixture thinner. Cool the remaining ganache to 60 degrees F by stirring it over a bowl of ice. The fat in this portion will begin to solidify, causing the ganache to thicken.

When both halves have reached the desired temperatures, slowly stream the hot ganache into the cold and stir to combine. You can use a food processor for this step by placing the cool ganache into the bowl of the food processor, turning on the machine, and streaming in the warm ganache. The mixture will not fall below 90 degrees F during this procedure, so there is no risk of creating a grainy texture. Combining the two portions of ganache in this way averages the temperature into the optimal working range, and the fat droplets will be suspended evenly in the water.

We followed the directions and were able to save the ganache. It would have been sad to discard the Valrhona chocolate but thankfully we fixed it and topped the devil's food cupcakes with the ganache. The cupcakes were fantastic!

As I mentioned in the last post, we had ice cream cookie sandwiches for dessert last Sunday. The cookies for the sandwich are thick and chewy chocolate chunk cookies. The cookies on their own are absolutely delicious with a glass of milk or coffee. Our friends have enjoyed the chocolate chunk cookies many times, so we decided to add a new twist and treat them to ice cream too.

The thick and chewy chocolate chip cookies recipe can be found in Cook's Illustrated's The New Best Recipe cookbook. We really like this recipe because it produces cookies that have a great chewy texture. Another reason why we like the recipe is the butter is melted as opposed to softened, so there's no pre-planning required to make the cookies.

On our last visit to the Scharffen Berger factory, we picked up a cookbook by the founders of Scharffen Berger, The Essence of Chocolate - Recipes for Baking and Cooking with Fine Chocolate. The recipes in the book are arranged by chocolate intensity and are contributed by the founders and chefs including Michael Chiarello, Elizabeth Falkner, Thomas Keller and Jacques Pepin.

In addition to sweet and savory recipes, there's also a brief history of Scharffen Berger and the chocolate making process. A few recipes that immediately caught my eye were chocolate pudding cakes, chocolate chocolate cupcakes, cakey brownies, chocolate chunk cheesecake and chili-marinated flank steak (with cocoa powder).

The first dessert I made from the cookbook was baked hot chocolate contributed by Heidi Friedlander, which she developed for Moxie, a popular Cleveland restaurant. I chose this recipe because it was simple to make with only four ingredients and the description in the book made me crave it.

"Baked hot chocolate is almost like having three desserts in one -- the top layer has just a hint of crispness, the center has the texture of warm chocolate pudding, and the bottom layer is just a shade thicker than the thickest hot chocolate you can imagine."