What is not to love about this phenomenal cake? A delicious, triple chocolate devil’s food cake with chocolate chunks folded in to the batter, layered with a fluffy marshmallow frosting. For the finishing touch, one of the cake layers is crumbled and used to coat the outside of the frosted cake. This is great because not only does it look awesome, it is probably the most no-fuss cake decorating I’ve ever done. No need to worry about a smooth frosting job here – just throw on some cake crumbs and you’re done!
I did hit a snag while baking this cake though. The original recipe recommends baking the cake in two 8-inch pans and then halving the cakes horizontally to end up with four layers. I only have 9-inch cake pans, so initially that was what I used. However, once out of the oven I determined that the layers were too thin to be halved (well, it could have been done, but I wanted them to look thicker) so I ended up baking two more layers, essentially doubling the cake recipe. This ended up giving me just the look I was going for of a nice, tall cake, so I have altered the recipe below to reflect these changes. However, if you have 8-inch pans, you can go that route (just halving the amount of cake batter.)
It seemed when the Tuesdays With Dorie group blogged about this cake, many of the members did not like the frosting. Consequently, I wasn’t expecting to like it either, especially since I’m not a huge marshmallow fan but I wanted to at least try it. I actually ended up loving it! It was fun to make and had a fantastic thick, sticky-sweet texture. It was definitely a hit all around, and one of my friends remarked that the combination of the cake and frosting made this taste like a giant Hostess cupcake! My only comment is that if you want the frosting between the cake layers to be as thick as they are on the cover of Dorie’s book, I think you’ll need to increase the batch by 50-100%. However, I really think that would be overkill and I think the current proportions of cake to frosting are just right.
I’m submitting this blog entry to the Got Milk? blog event hosted by Linda at Make Life Sweeter. Got Milk? is a blog event featuring any sweet item containing milk in honor of World Breastfeeding Week. I think this is a very important cause to recognize. If you have been reading my blog for a long time, you may remember my entry from last year when Andrew was only one month old. At that time, breastfeeding was still incredibly difficult and challenging for me. However, I’m happy to report that we made it to 11 months of exclusive nursing and even now at 13 months, we still nurse occasionally. I know that not everyone is able to breastfeed and I also know how difficult it can be, but when it works out it is truly a wonderful thing. So, I give you this delicious sweet treat in honor of breastfeeding.