A Devilish Cake for an Evil Cake Lady

Yes, people, on Tuesday May 27 I officially become a year older. To celebrate (and/or distract myself from the fact that I am older), I invited a few friends to try out a fondue restaurant, and to gild the lily, I baked Dorie Greenspan's Devils Food White Out Cake. Seemed the most appropriate cake for Evil Cake Lady's birthday celebrations.

Also, this cake is the most recent project of the Lazy Bakers, No Rules Club. The club consists of me, Melinda, the Breadbasketcase, and Pinknest. Melinda, the unofficial club president, has also invited her friend Jeanette, who doesn't have a blog, to bake along. We hope Jeanette sends Melinda some photos and a recap, so that Melinda can post that on her blog. We all wanted to bake together (even though none of us live near each other--or even have met each other in real life), but we didn't want rules and stipulations and deadlines. Hence, Lazy Bakers and No Rules. Melinda is really the one who started this whole thing--that's why I've made her the unofficial president.

ECL's Devils Food White Out Birthday Cake!

May 24, 2008
Name of cake: Devil's Food White Out Cake
Occasion: ECL Turns 35, and the Lazy Bakers' bake-along
Constituents: Three layers triple chocolate devil's food cake, filled and frosted with marshmallow fluff, decorated with the cake crumbs from the fourth layer of cake

THIS IS IT
this had better be it!

Like BBC, I had to go out and buy 8 inch cake pans. BBC ended up at Williams-Sonoma buying gold plated cake pans that set her back $18.95 per pan...not what I wanted to do. So on Saturday (yes, the day of the party) I headed out to the Decorette store after my massage to buy a couple of cake pans. There was much confusion at the store concerning the cake pans that I wanted to buy--apparently they just had a cake decorating class--the wedding cake version--and all the students cleaned the store out of 8 inch cake pans. After about an hour of being there and talking to 3 different people, I finally got them to call the Tigard store to see if they had two 8 inch cake pans they could set aside for me. And one hour after that, I was back home with two 8 inch cake pans, a falafel sandwich for me, and some milk for the cake.

Phew!

how many cocoa powders does it take

The night before I had begun my mise-en-place for this cake, so the baking part of this cake went fairly smoothly. There are a lot of ingredients to assemble and add to the cake at certain times which seems so fussy to me. I would like to understand why there are so many ingredients--why baking soda AND baking powder? Why melted chocolate AND cocoa powder? Why brown sugar AND regular sugar? Why milk AND boiling water? And why boiling water--aren't we just melting the butter when we add that? Dorie Greenspan is awesome, but she isn't as interested in giving us the whys as is the RLB. And I admit it, I like the whys.

ECL's Devils Food White Out Birthday Cake!

The cakes baked up nice without much mishap. As they cooled on the racks, I cleaned up the kitchen and got ready to make the frosting.

The frosting, Dorie's version of Seven Minute Frosting, took forever to come together. Dorie's recipe requires that you cook a sugar syrup (plus the cream of tartar) on the stove while your egg whites wait patiently in the KitchenAid. The last time I made this addictive frosting, I used Martha's recipe and she has you cook the eggs, sugar, and water over the stove together. Dorie's way seems like it would be easier, but it was more like a twenty to twenty-five minute frosting. And hence my roommate and I were 40 minutes late for our dinner reservations, and the last ones to arrive at my party! Pretty typical.

ECL's Devils Food White Out Birthday Cake!

Cake assembly was easy and fun--this is a great frosting as it is billowy, fluffy, and sticky. Easy to get on the cake and make look pretty.

Our server at the restaurant kindly whisked my cake in the cake carrier to their cooler, where it waited patiently for us to finish dipping all sorts of things into two little pots of stuff--cheese, broth, chocolate and caramel. When our server brought out our cake (which I had them take out early so that it would come up to room temperature), she brought us a little box of white candles! We stopped at four candles (we didn't want to melt the cake with 35 candles' worth of BTUs), and my peeps sang me happy birthday--how sweet!

ECL's Devils Food White Out Birthday Cake!

By this time, the five of us had eaten quite a bit, and even though we cut small slices of cake, it was hard to finish. However, it is a good cake, with a moist and very light crumb when at room temperature, and the marshmallow frosting is a nice, light, and surprisingly, not too sweet adornment for the very chocolaty cake. For the sugars I used light muscovado and golden baker's and it gave the cake a nice, flowery, molasses and caramel tone.

didn't we get enough cheese in the first course?
just in case you didn't get enough cheese
and that is my lip ring, not a hole in my teeth

To be honest, I am not a fan of the chocolate chips in the cake, but most people seem to enjoy it. I had a piece tonight with some friends who could not make it to dinner, and the cake was still cold from the refrigerator. This left the cake pleasantly dense and fudgy, and the frosting even better. Either way, a good cake indeed!

ECL's Devils Food White Out Birthday Cake!

Melinda, the dedicated person that she is, typed up the entire recipe, which is no small feat. Click here to read about her cake, which took a village to eat, and see the recipe.

Breadbasketcase, currently romping around Australia and New Zealand (say hi to the sheep!), braved this very complicated-looking recipe and made a great cake for mother's day. Click here to read about her first project with the Lazy Bakers, and to see her gold plated cake pans!

Comments

  1. Anonymous26/5/08 05:27

    Bravo, bravo! Many happy returns and birthday spankings to you!
    Jeanette has forwarded her results to me so I hope to add it to my post. I am a little stupored still from my recent anesthesia and feel very slow to do anything. I can't seem to concentrate yet. So bear with me!
    Your cake is lovely and I agree the 25 minute frosting is a very long wait staring at a candy thermometer!
    I have had problems with 7 minute frostings becoming grainy, so perhaps this is Dorie's solution to that problem. The frosting remained silky and billowy. I agree also that I am addicted to RLB's explanations and I am more likely to follow something complicated when I understand why I must stand on my head and turn the bowl counterclockwise to achieve the perfect texture!
    Your write up is, as always, a hoot to read! Imagine there being a run on 8 inch pans, just when you need them!
    BBB case has chosen the next bake.
    Shall we try the vanilla pound cake in the RLB Cake Bible? We all have some vanilla beans to use!
    Since there are no rules, I am happy for us to do what ever we want to the pound cake that we fancy. I can see something with strawberries in my future...
    Cheers, birthday girlie!

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  2. Pozdravljaju, Zhenechka!

    It sounds like you had a great celebration. I wish you joy in the coming year!

    Love,
    Raya

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  3. Melinda, thank you for the birthday wishes! This was only my second time making the marshmallow frosting--Martha's recipe being the first time--and both came out billowy and smooth. Martha's tasted a bit different (more like marshmallows to me) but the texture of Dorie's is a little flulfflier, without being too gooey. Martha's was gooey, but in a fun way!

    The vanilla pound cake sounds great! Back to good ol' RLB and her explanations. I love them.

    Take your time with Jeanette's posting--hope your recovery is going well!

    Kisses,
    ECL

    Raya, thanks lovely lady! The fondue place was fun--who knew that going to a restaurant and cooking your own food would be so great? I will be off call soon--which means I'll be able to leave town--so I'll be getting in touch with you soon. Hope you had a good weekend!

    Kisses to you too,
    Zhenya

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  4. Anonymous27/5/08 01:40

    Hello ECL, Belated birthday greetings from me, I haven't been in contact with you before but I felt compelled to read how you got on with this confection and I am relieved to hear that you also thought the syrup took a long time to reach temperature! Because I am not used to using a thermometer very much I'm afraid I got impatient and mine didn't reach the required temp. therefore my frosting was NOT very good. However you live and learn!!! Next time I promise to do better. All was not lost as I made the best of a bad job, the cake itself was very good, so I served it with cream and raspberries as a dessert. I do have RLB's bible and I have been reading up on frostings, as you say she goes into great detail, I wish I'd read up before I attempted this recipe.
    Your cake looks as good as hers and I'm sure it was greatly enjoyed. Now you enjoy being 35, I can just about remember that far back, it was great!!! Regards Jeannette.

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  5. Yaaaay for birthdays and a new post from you! The frosting on that cake looked just like a cloud... I wanted to stick my fingers in it and just smear it all over my face! Happy birthday, Miss Evil Cake Lady!

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  6. Jeanette, thanks for the birthday greetings, and nice to meet you! I am looking forward to seeing Melinda's repost on your baking escapade. I almost took the sugar syrup off the stove early myself as I was running late for my own party! I thought maybe my thermometer broke. I wonder if the cream of tartar slowed down the cook time? I didn't understand why we cooked it with the sugar instead of putting it in with the egg whites-another unanswered question! Great to have you baking along!

    Caracakes, thanks for the birthday wishes! I know what you mean about this frosting...it is so billowy and yummy! Maybe you should frost your wedding cupcakes in 7 Minute frosting...in case you and your husband end up smearing cupcake on each other when you feed each other! (If you're doing that, of course.)

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  7. Anonymous29/5/08 04:54

    Happy Bday! So it looks like you enjoyed the cake!!!! So sorry to miss it...but you look fabulous! I miss you! Regenia

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  8. ECL,
    Happy birthday to you! (And to me too, one day later. I got to celebrate twice this year: May 28 in Australian time and May 28 in MN time, one day later).
    Your cake looks marvelous--and I'm so impressed that you took it to a restaurant and introduced it to friends too! I just did it for family, and, since it was Mother's Day, they had to be nice to me.
    BBC

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  9. Regenia, thanks darling! I can't wait to see you in about 3 weeks! Safe travels--Jen

    BBC, welcome back to the Northern Hemisphere! I hope you enjoyed your trip to Australia and New Zealand--will you write a blog post about it?
    Happy Birthday to you, too! I got to celebrate my 21st birthday for 25 hours (I flew from St Petersburg to Copenhagen that day and gained an hour) so I can imagine how fun it was to celebrate your birthday twice!
    Ah, see, when you bake your own cake for your own birthday, all your guests have to be nice to you, too. It all works out :)

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