Brain Test 80 Cake
Elly Garnand
Jonah Lehrer, one of our regular reporters (he writes all the time about the brain), told Jad and me about an experiment involving the prefrontal cortex, located just behind the forehead. It's the brain area largely responsible for willpower. This hunk of brain tissue, he says, has greatly expanded over the last few hundred-thousand years, but "it probably hasn't expanded enough." The reason our willpower is so often weak, he suggests, is because this bit of brain lacks a certain (how shall we put this?) ... muscularity.
In his book How We Decide, and in a recent Wall Street Journal article, Jonah writes about an experiment by Stanford University professor Baba Shiv, who collected several dozen undergraduates and divided them into two groups.
Radiolab is produced by WNYC in New York and distributed by NPR. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich are co-hosts. Jonah Lehrer describes the Shiv experiment in much greater detail in his latest book, just out in paperback, How We Decide.
This brain puzzle is just another fun way to test your IQ. However, taking an actual IQ test is a good way of knowing your IQ level. So, did you spot how to divide the cake into 8 pieces by making only 3 cuts in this IQ Puzzle?
Only a Sharp Mind can spot which Glass has more Water in the Picture within 11 secs!Get here current GK and GK quiz questions in English and Hindi for India, World, Sports and Competitive exam preparation. Download the Jagran Josh Current Affairs App.
Preheat oven to 350F. Butter two 9-inch round cake pans and line with circles of parchment paper, then butter parchment. (Alternately, you can use a cooking spray, either with just butter or butter and flour to speed this process up.)
Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy, then beat in vanilla. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well and scraping down the bowl after each addition. At low speed, beat in buttermilk until just combined (mixture will look curdled). Add flour mixture in three batches, mixing until each addition is just Incorporated.
Spread batter evenly in cake pan, then rap pan on counter several times to eliminate air bubbles. (I like to drop mine a few times from two inches up, making a great big noisy fuss.) Bake until golden and a wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes. Cool in pan on a rack 10 minutes, then run a knife around edge of pan. Invert onto rack and discard parchment, then cool completely, about 1 hour.
Combine the chocolate and espresso powder, if using, in the top of a double-boiler or in a heatproof bowl over simmering water. Stir until the chocolate is melted. (Alternately, you can melt the chocolate in a microwave for 30 seconds, stirring well, and then heating in 15 second increments, stirring between each, until the chocolate is melted.) Remove from heat and let chocolate cool until tepid.
Whisk together the sour cream, 1/4 cup of the corn syrup and vanilla extract until combined. Add the tepid chocolate slowly and stir quickly until the mixture is uniform. Taste for sweetness, and if needed, add additional corn syrup in one tablespoon increments until desired level of sweetness is achieved.
Let cool in the refrigerator until the frosting is a spreadable consistency. This should not take more than 30 minutes. Should the frosting become too thick or stiff, just leave it out until it softens again.
I totally understand the need to have a good cake recipe under your belt pre-baby. I always felt like I needed to be able to make a reliably good pie and excellent chocolate chip cookies (and also sew clothes well, grow vegetables, and get more comfortable singing silly songs) before becoming a mother. The downside to this is that now my 3-year-old thinks I can sew, cook, and fix anything in the world, and I keep trying to live up to her sometimes unreasonable expectations.
You have definitely crossed the bridge into Motherhood land. This cake looks supremely comforting, delicious, and like something everyone should know how to make. Your kid is going to be asking for a birthday every week!
You are very wise to have created this recipe for your official Mom-dom. Once you start though, be prepared to make a cake not only for the birthday at home on the day of the actually birthday, but also for the birthday party (not always the same thing!), and for cupcakes at school! And, once used to homemade, your little snowflake will be used to the best and will settle for nothing less. Lucky tike.
When I read about your journey I frantically scrolled down to see the recipe. I too have been searching and searching for the perfect yellow cake recipe for years. In all seriousness I may go home and make a yellow layer cake for my family just to try this. Thanks for sharing! Yahoo!
I love this post. . .only you would take this into consideration for parenting preparation. I really despise boxed cake mixes and even more so canned frosting. I look forward to making these into cupcakes for my nieces the next time I have them over. Thank you for another great recipe Deb : )
Now can you figure out the rum cake recipe? The usual is a box of yellow cake mix plus a box of instant pudding mix plus rum. It is good but it bothers me to use the mixes. Not suitable for Baby but so almost necessary for adults. Can you do it?
dear deb!
love your site. i am a newbie to food blogging & enjoy your blogs & photography as well as your recipes.
in addition, i am new to cake baking! how did you level out the cake tops? thanks so much.
My second son spent his first month in a sheepskin lined drawer, placed on a table next to my bed, within easy reach. It worked perfectly, much better than a crib across the room, needing me to get up and reach into.
We all are so excited about this baby, Deb. Aunties, all.
Now I am confused though-I always understood butter cake to be different from vanilla cake. Are they actually one and the same? I get requests from my kids to bake one or the other, depending on whose birthday is coming up. I would appreciate any clarification, since I feel rather silly now! Thanks!
I have made this cake with regular flour. It does work fine, but sift it twice. Cake flour is already sifted once (pre-box) and then again in this recipe so it is lighter than light. You can also make your own cake flour: Add two tablespoons of corn starch to each cup of regular flour and sift it twice. Measure your cups of flour from this mixture.
Moral of the story: Thank you for providing a bright point of joy amidst my studying! I am going to bake this and eat it (possibly all by myself) to get me through practice exams. I have been reading and cooking constantly from your blog for some months now, but this is the most miraculously timed recipe I have found!!
Gorgeous cake; the yellow-cake-chocolate-icing has always been my favorite. I have always refused to bake my own birthday cake, on principle, but I might have to rethink that. I have until May to think about it.
To the lady whose husband is not keen on sour cream; could you perhaps make a similarly delicious chocolate frosting using cream cheese and a little butter instead? I made one this weekend for a chocolate yoghurt cake and was really happy with it.
What a stunner of a cake, great contrasts of colour AND texture, the deliciousness I take as a given. It did remind me quite a bit of this lovely cake I made back in June. The main secret of its oomph lies in that that vanilla frosting, SK, I hope you try it too.
I made a yellow cake with chocolate butter frosting out of my old Better Homes cookbook two years ago. The cake was dry and blah, the frosting was the only part worth eating! (I have had better luck with chocolate cakes.) I will try this combo, it sounds great.
can I just say that I LOVE your site, Deb?! Thanks everyone for the answers to the corn syrup question. This is absolutely my favorite and possibly the best resource on the web for great, everyday food that works EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. (If you knew me at all you would know I NEVER gush without merit. But there, I just did.)
My housemate is severely dairy-allergic, so I made the cake with coconut milk, keeping everything else the same, and it baked up BEAUTIFULLY and has a lovely crumb (just a little drier than I would expect from buttermilk) and tastes wonderful, with just the faintest subtle echo of coconut. Dawn, I made a classic buttercream with margarine and French vanilla Coffee Mate in place of butter and cream, and I (who am a buttercream snob) Could.Not.Tell.The.Difference. (I would have totally gone with the chocolate icing, but the birthday honoree wanted classic yellow-cake-and-buttercream). It is just the perfection of simplicity!
I tried this today, but I made cupcakes. This recipe makes exactly 96 nicely-domed mini cupcakes (about a teaspoon and a half of batter per cupcake). And the frosting recipe makes just enough to frost all of them (medium amount of frosting on each). I put half a teaspoon of pureed raspberry on top of each cupcake before baking, which was a great addition. And I got to use my home-made sprinkles, so yay! This will definitely be my go-to yellow cake recipe from now on.
This really does look beautiful and moist. I will make it this weekend. I made a chocolate birthday cake for my sister inlaws birthday this past weekend. Everyone loved it. I added the instant expresso for the first time and it make a big difference in bringing out the chocolate flavor. Thanks for the awesome recipe!
I made this cake for my birthday yesterday, and the cake came out beautifully, but for some reason, the frosting did not turn out so well. The chocolate melted fine, it all mixed together well, but when it came to the sweetening point, it just never came together for me. I kept adding more corn syrup, but the taste of the frosting was still just bitter and too sour.
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