Petra Cox: I am Petra Cox with Moms Apple Pie Company in Occoquan Virginia. Today we made delicious, rich, fuggy, dark chocolate cake and these cake layers I made ahead of time and they spent an hour in the oven before being ready and they have fully cooled off to room temperature. So, with my springform pan, all I really have to do is release the side and pull it off and then take the cake off the bottom. So, thats really simple with springform pan and I have the metal to take off the bottom and that layer parchment peels off, keeps the cake and you can just lay that gently on to whatever work surface you need to do. I have two layers here and youll notice that the tops theyve sort of the taller around the sides theyve risen a little more around the sides and you just need to trim that off if you want a perfectly even top of your cake.

So, what you need to do is you take a knife and you just keep it leveled as you work slowly through the cake. So, it looks a little rough to the eye, but now you have somewhat more even cake and you can use the nice flat bottom to ice on top and keep this crummy part more towards the bottom because the danger of keeping those crumbs is that, they will mix in with the icing and you dont get as nice looking icing top for the finish. So, I am going to put this over and then we have a nice flat surface to work with.

We are going to put a little bit of the chocolate butter cream on there. And in the middle, its okay so if the crumb is mixing it does not really have much of an affect on the appearance, but you dont need to put too much in the middle, but do notice, that you can put it in the middle and when you put the other layer on top, it tends to spread out of it.

So, I gently put the other layer on top and this point I am going to sort of dusting my crumbs away so that they dont get stuck to the icing and spatula tends to collect some of the crumbs, So its important just to -- on the edge of your bowl just to release some of the icing that has been on your spatula, so you are not adding more crumbs to the icing. As much as you can try not to touch the cake so much, try to use just your tools to touch the icing and spread over, lightly over the cake. This is a spatula made especially for icing the cake and it can have either a more sort of rustic wavy look to the cake or you can do it completely smooth. Personally, I like that you know Moms Chocolate Cake, rustic wavy look, but you can notice that I am spreading icing from the middle, out to the edges and I have got a little crumb on there, I am going to just put that on the side and add a little more. Again we have the bottom of the cake on top so that we have a nice, smooth surface to work with. Then we are going to the sides, which are little trickier. When you are working with the sides, there is really much higher risk of collecting crumbs on your tools, but its okay to pick that little crumbs, but if you dont mind the crumbs its okay to leave them there, they taste good. What I am using as my working surface is a sheet of the parchment paper or baking tray liner and you can just use a blade and cut around the edge when you are finished and then scoop that over onto more of a nice display plate, a platter, cake platter.

Just remember when you are cutting it that there is paper on the bottom. Now we have a cute little wavy homemade chocolate cake. You can decorate it however you like, but this is in a homemade style and you can begin, its a delicious rich chocolate cake. The best way to cut it is probably with a hot wet knife so you can cut through it without dragging the crumbs through it.

That is how we make our chocolate cake at Moms Apple Pie Company and you can do it at home now.