Here we are – another Tuesday and another TWD post. I’m getting this posted later than I intended, but given my recent track record, I’m just glad I’m getting this posted at all.
This week Stephanie, of Confessions of a City Eater, selected the recipe with its mouthwatering photo gracing the cover of Dorie’s book for us to make; Devil’s Food White Out Cake. Despite my many ups and downs lately, I was determined to make this one…
I didn’t have the camera on hand for step by step pictures this time (I know that is starting to sound like an excuse – someday I will get my very own camera and we’ll see if I do step by step pictures every week), so it will be a relatively short post. I will say I was pretty excited about this recipe – dark chocolate cake and marshmallow frosting sounds like a winning combination. The end result was certainly good, but not quite as good (or as pretty) as I was hoping for. I think this was simply a case of expectations being too high because I really did enjoy the cake.
The cake layers were quite moist and very chocolaty, but the batter was too thin to support the chocolate chips. This resulted in two solid layers of chocolate chips in my finished cake. I knew this was going to happen as soon as I saw the consistency of the batter after adding the boiling water, but I put them in anyway (more chocolate never hurts). Personally I rather enjoyed this, but it made cutting the cake not quite as clean/neat as it should have been
The frosting was – well, underwhelming. It was fluffy, light, sweet and completely overpowered by the cake. Now, since I am a self avowed chocoholic I really didn’t mind that the chocolate flavor was front and center, but I would have paired that cake with a nice fudgy frosting myself.
Here we have the full cake before slicing, I may have gone a little over board with the crumb coating, but I wasn’t entirely thrilled with the taste of the frosting off the beaters, so I decided more crumbs = good.
And here is the sliced cake. As you can see, it didn’t slice very cleanly. I also did not get the nice thick layers of frosting between the cake layers. This I don’t really understand, I used every last bit of the frosting the recipe made to frost this cake. I also noticed that after spending the night in the refrigerator my frosting had deflated a bit so maybe I didn’t get it quite right.
When all is said and done I’m glad I made this recipe – both “Prince Charming” and I enjoyed it. I’ll certainly make the cake portion again, but I think I’ll pair it with a different frosting next time.
Tags: cake, chocolate, frosting, marshmallow, TWD
February 18th, 2009 at 3:14 am
Your cake looks great. I do agree the frosting was not the right one for this cake. I tried it with a whipped cream frosting and it was great!
February 18th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Your cake looks great and I’m glad you enjoyed it even though the frosting wasn’t all that for you.
I have to say I loved it!!
February 19th, 2009 at 7:28 am
We liked it much better the second day, but it was still quite messy when cut!
February 19th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Sorry you didn’t cake for the frosting, it was actually my favorite part. Brought back memories of my mom making it. Yours looks fantastic.
February 20th, 2009 at 6:28 am
Well, considering you are a chocoholic, I would think you would like the cake. My favorite thing about the cake itself was the bits of chocolate chunks in it. Yum! The frosting was a bit of a pain for me, but overall I liked the whole thing. Great job.
February 21st, 2009 at 8:49 am
I’m sorry you didn’t like the frosting – but at least you were able to make it! It looks fantastic – one nice-looking TWD cake! I love chocolate frosting too (much better)!