one-bowl (whole-wheat!) chocolate cake

     "Two thousand thirteen". That phrase still feels foreign on my tongue. Is it really another year? Though, if you think about it, the calendar year is an entirely artificial construct, intangible but also so real to us.
     I baked this cake for a New Year's Eve party I attended. A week or so ago, I was at my aunt's house and saw that she had bought a chocolate cake mix, so (naturally!) I offered to bake her a cake from scratch, so this happened. I couldn't take photos of the inside of the cake, since I was taking it to a party. Sorry!
    There's coffee in both the cake and the frosting. However, I'm not including a recipe for the mocha frosting, because it resulted out of my dumping a ton of cocoa powder into a recipe for coffee icing that had turned grainy and weird. It eventually turned out decently, but I didn't measure anything so can hardly write a recipe for it.

    The chocolate filigree on top is very simple to make. You melt some chocolate (I used chocolate chips, but chopped chocolate would be better for melting) and put it in a pastry bag or a freezer Ziploc bag. Snip off a tiny bit off a corner, and pipe designs onto a piece of parchment paper. Place in the freezer for several minutes to let harden. They look much more difficult than they really are! I had quite a few very impressed people ask me if I had bought them from the store.

     Oh yeah, and the cake's whole wheat too, and fairly healthy. You can hardly taste the health factor, since it's so rich and moist and dark. Even though you can't really taste the coffee in the cake, coffee deepens the flavor and makes it irresistible. Overall, the best chocolate cake I've ever made, not exaggerating at all.
     Anyways, let's all strive to make 2013 a year of happiness and health (tip: start by replacing your normal chocolate cake with this one). Cheers!

One-Bowl Chocolate Cake
Adapted from Eating Well
Makes a two-layer, 9" round cake

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups whole-wheat pastry flour
1 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup nonfat buttermilk
1 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup canola oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup hot strong black coffee

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Coat two 9-inch round cake pans with cooking spray. Line each pan with a circle of parchment paper, and spray the paper.
2. Whisk flour, granulated sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Add buttermilk, brown sugar, egg, oil and vanilla. Beat with an electric mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes. Add hot coffee and beat to blend. (The batter will be quite thin.) Pour the batter into the prepared pans.
3. Bake the cake layers until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes. Cool in the pans on a wire rack for 10 minutes; remove from the pans, peel off the parchment paper and let cool completely. 
4. Frost and assemble using your favorite frosting recipe. This tutorial from Whisk Kid is very helpful if you're not so confident with frosting layer cakes.