Plaid Birthday Cake for Work

This saturday was a huge sale at work.  Our company is now hugely respectful of its own history so Eddie Bauer's Birthday - he would have been 111, were he with us - was cause for celebration.  We had a potluck lunch and as it was a birthday, I knew I would have to make a cake.

KDavidClark on Flickr

The signature plaid seemed to be the obvious choice, but plaid seemed like quite an undertaking.  By simplifying the design and getting a lot of help tinting the fondant from my patient husband, I turned out better than I anticipated

The bottom 8" square cake is Devil's Food with a chocolate buttercream and some raspberry preserves.  It was done dairy-free so that all my co-workers could enjoy a piece.  No need to settle for a dry grocery store slab cake when I'm happy to make you what you want.

Devil's Food Cake

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa

1 cup hot, strong coffee

1/2 vegetable shortening

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla 

1 1/2 cake flour

3/4 tsp salt 

1/4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 350*.  Grease and flour two 8"round or 1 8"x3" square cake pans.  Combine cocoa and coffee in a small bowl, mixing well.  Put shortening, sugar, eggs, and vanilla in large mixing bowl and beat for a minute until light and fluffy.  Sift together flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.  Add the cocoa mixture alternately with flour mixture in three parts, beating well after each addition and ending with dry.

Pour batter into pans, smooth tops.  Bake 25mins for 8' round pans and 45-50 for square - test with toothpick inserted in centre - it should come out clean or with a few crumbs on it.  The cake should be slightly fudgy so try not to over bake.  Let cool on racks for 10-15 mins before turning out onto cooling racks.