TWD: Devils Food White Out Cake

I think that everyone was excited when the cover recipe of Baking From My Home to Yours got picked by Stephanie of Confessions of a City Eater, I know that I was! There's just something about a big 'ole layer cake with mounds of fluffy white frosting that makes me go weak in the knees. It would have been a perfect Valentine's Day dessert but I made it a few weeks ago for Dudley's birthday. At the time, I wasn't sure if he'd be in D.C. for Valentine's Day and this is definitely a cake that I didn't want to eat all by myself! You see, Dudley and I have been dating for three years but we've never lived in the same city. He's up here looking for a job (so, fingers crossed everyone, please!!) and I absolutely love being able to see him for more than just a few days at a time. So, while it really is a singleton's kitchen, lately Dudley's been around more and that's great because it means I have someone around to help me eat all of the TWD goodies each week.

So, I decided that I was going to bake a little cake because even though Dudley's around a three layer 8" cake is a lot of cake to eat. So, I halved the recipe and made it in 2 four-inch cake pans. The cake batter was super easy to halve and I added white chocolate chips along with the semi-sweet because Dudley is a "more is more" kind of guy when it comes to chocolate chips. The little cake layers came out fine. They only issue I had was the the top layers sort of cracked when I split them in half. No matter. I just cut them in half and used the 2 good halves to make one of the layers and then crumbled the remaining portions. I sampled some of the crumbs and let me tell you, this cake is so good it brings out the Texan-speak in me because oh-my-gawsh-y'all-this-is-soooo-good!!! Yup, you can take the girl out of Texas but you can't take Texas out of the girl and I think that this chocolate cake is so good! It's rich, it's moist, it's delicious and I definitely could've eaten it plain, right then and there, without the frosting. But, a birthday cake calls for frosting so I went ahead and made the marshmallow frosting.

I didn't have a lot of trouble with the frosting. It took awhile for the syrup to get up to temperature but it eventually did (it was one of those wait . . . wait . . . wait . . . oh my gosh, it's ready and now I'm NOT ready, eeek!, sort of things) and then the syrup combines with the whipped egg whites and there's fluffy marshmallow goodness. Actually, the only part of the cake that I had trouble with was the crumbs. I didn't make them small enough, I think because I thought that the cake was so good that it was a shame to turn a layer into crumbs. Anyway, the crumbs (or hunks in my case) sort of dry out after they're embedded in the frosting and I personally think it's a waste of cake. I think that next time I would probably just make a 4 layer cake, with more frosting, and keep the outside simple or decorate it with chocolate jimmies or something to that effect.

I don't have any pictures of the sliced cake and I really wanted to take a picture of Dudley eating a slice of it. However, in my eagerness to taste the finished product, I neglected Dorie's instructions to gently saw through the layers. I just pushed down with my knife and squished and splatted the cake all over the place. So, no pictures but the cake was fantastic anyway. I think that I'm going to make this one again soon. It's a contender to replace my all-time favorite birthday cake, yellow with chocolate frosting, and I didn't think that any cake could ever do that.

Thanks to Stephanie for choosing such a fun TWD pick this week. I love her blog, she has all sorts of great recipes and restaurant reviews on it so check it out.