There is a mistake in this recipe! It should be 2 teaspoons (tsp) of baking powder not tablespoons. Maybe that is why some people have complained about the texture of the cake... I make this cake for my mom's birthday every year - it's been her favorite cake since she was a kid. The dark chocolate swirls are a nice contrast to the sweet fluffy chocolate filling. It is best served cold and we think it gets even better a day or two after it is made. To answer another reviewer's question yes it should read 1 1/4 cups evaporated milk in the cake itself and another 1/4 cup evaporated milk in the filling. I buy a regular 12oz can of evaporated milk measure out 1/4 cup milk for the filling then dump the rest of the can into the cake batter. I have measured it though and it ends up being just about 1 1/4 cups.
Something is wrong with this recipe. My grandmother use to make this cake. It was a favorite. I didn't have her original recipe so I looked on the internet to make it. I made this recipe but made it with butter instead of shortening. It was a flop. It raised then fell in the center. It was dry not moist like I remember my grandmother's. Also it fell apart when I tried to cut the layers. This recipe calls for two tablespoons of baking powder. I think this is part of the problem. I'm wondering if anybody else has had a similar experience with this recipe. Also my grandmother didn't make the filling like this recipe called for. I know that she changed it. She would whip cream add cocoa powder vanilla and sugar. I'm not sure if she added fine granulated sugar or confectioners sugar. I am still trying to perfect this recipe.
we have been making Pinwheel Cake for Walker family special occasions for almost 50 years my mom got the recipe from a magazine. Serve it really cold in small servings. The bits of bitter chocolate and the fluffy filling are a great contrast. Bad for you but oh so good.
dry and the bits of chocolate are bitter.
This has also been a favorite in our family. But we lost the recipe from the original chocolate wrapper. I've made the cake before from a hand-me-down hand-written recipe with uneven success. The issue is the quantity of two ingredients. Specifically is it really 2 TABLESPOONS of baking powder? Or 2 teaspoons? 2TBS sounds like too much. Also I understood that the total evaporated milk was 1 1/4 cups divided between the cake (1 cup) and the filling (1/4). Please confirm that it is really 1 1/4 cups of evaporated milk in the flour mix; and another 1/4 cup later in the filling. My concern is that with the ingredients as now listed the cake mix will be too wet (that extra 1/4 evaporated milk) and might rise so high (2 TBSP baking powder) as to flop.
Wow this cake is for real chocolate lovers. Very chocolatey! It has a fine old-fashioned texture (not greasy like cake-mix cakes) and holds together really well considering you have to slice it crosswise. I thought that was the trickiest part. You can control how bittersweet the decoration is by how much you swirl the pinwheels. I found I had to drizzle the chocolate fairly close to the pan edge otherwise the pinwheels shrink toward the center; and cut the chocolate deep into the cake as I swirl or else it forms a bitter crust.
Looked like a good cake recipe but was very dissapointed. The cake was dry and the filling was much too sweet. Other problems were the pinwheel design was hard to see and there were no chocolate chunks.
This is a great recipe! My friend Karen gave it to me and everyone loves it. Well worth the effort!
This cake has been our family favorite since my Mom started making it 40 years ago. Now my Dad my sister my daughter and I all make it for special occasions. The little chips of unsweetened chocolate balance the fluffy shortening filling beautifully!
