The Slow-Cooked Sentence

A 2-year-old’s cake.

My daughter, Chaja, celebrated her birthday Thursday and frosted her 11th cake. When she was small she smeared “raspberry-fluff icing on an angel-surprise cake” a la “Bunny Cakes.” Now that she’s crowing that she has just two more years left before she’s a teen-ager, she asked for a yellow cake with chocolate frosting as dangerously dark and delicious as the vampires in “Twilight.”

The same girl, nine years later.

Here’s the to-die-for recipe:

Foolproof Chocolate Frosting
adapted from Cook’s Illustrated March-April 2008 issue

20 tablespoons (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
3/4 cup Dutch-processed cocoa (I used Hershey’s cocoa)
Pinch of salt
3/4 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
8 ounces chocolate, melted and cooled (I used milk chocolate)

Cook’s Illustrated recommended mixing the frosting in a food processor, but I didn’t read the recipe ahead of time, and poured everything into my mixer. Didn’t make a difference in the outcome.

Process butter, sugar, cocoa, and salt until smooth, scraping sides of bowl as needed. Add corn syrup and vanilla and process until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Scrapes sides of bowl, then add chocolate and pulse until smooth and creamy, 10 to 15 seconds.