Devil’s Food White-Out Cake

“Oh my God, Karen, you can't just ask people why they're white.”

                        -- Gretchen

My first post indicated that I would not be able to provide recipes from cookbooks. This remains true, but one common loophole is to have a link to another website that did have the stones to post the recipe, a passing of the legal buck if you will. I can do that with this recipe, but first a little story.

I was sitting in Book People – for those unfamiliar with Austin, just take a Barnes and Noble and fill it with hipsters – waiting for my roommates to finish filling out job applications when I saw it, the holy grail of baking: Baking, From My Home to Yours. Dorie Greenspan is right up there with Alton Brown, i.e. I would stalk them. I grabbed the book and scurried back to our table, rifling through gorgeous pictures while my roommates tried to ignore me. After I began cooing (somewhere in the brownie chapter), they stopped making eye contact.

Eventually I came across this cake. Like Sméagol, I immediately coveted the precious and had to possess it. Unfortunately the cookbook was forty dollars; how do those “book people” sleep at night? So I spent ten minutes furtively scribbling down the recipe. I was terrified I would get caught in the act and thrown out of the store. Walking out I was so nervous I was convinced the stolen instructions would set of the door alarms. I am not an innate shoplifter.

Anyway, I got home and on a whim did a Google search for Baking, From My Home to Yours. It seems to promote the book Dorie was kind enough to share a recipe with NPR. One specific recipe. So. Awesome.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6504932

The previous post had pictures taken in my parent’s kitchen. I made the white-out cake at my house. The kitchen here isn’t as spacious and it has some… unique attributes. Like an interior window. Counter space is also quite limited. That’s being generous; the only countertop is three feet by three feet of tile with no access to a wall socket; we use it to dry dishes. To compensate I bought what used to be a baby changing station and repurposed it as the main culinary workspace.

I started by beating the butter. I am of the opinion that you can’t spend too much time on this step. If I’m not in a rush, I’ll put the butter in the mixer, throw it on high, and walk away for ten minutes. I do the same after dumping in the sugar.

I’m fascinated by how little sugar goes into this cake. The end product is still quite sweet, probably thanks to the frosting, but the cake itself is dense, dark chocolate.

I added the eggs, and sure enough the whole mixture seemed to curdle. I thought it looked cool, but I can see why Dorie warns you about it. If I hadn’t known it was going to do that I would have assumed something went wrong and started over.

The melted chocolate smoothed everything out nicely. I ended up burning the first batch of chocolate I tried to melt; I neglected to lower the power setting on the microwave and the chocolate scorched. So I just ate it.

This is one of those recipes that has you alternate dry and wet ingredients. I always wonder if such finicky instructions really matter, but I get joy in following dubious and hyper-specific rules (not a joke) so that was really a plus. Sifting the dry ingredients is essential, a fact that took me years of mediocre cakes to realize.

If I make this cake again I’m substituting the boiling water for a cup of hot coffee. I’ve tried several chocolate cake recipes that have coffee or espresso powder, and the end result is always a noticeably richer chocolate taste. Plus it means I would dirty more dishes, which brings me to the mess.

I’m actually quite proud of myself for keeping the workspace so tidy. And look, there’s that window that makes no sense! I’m still trying to find a way to utilize it ironically, maybe with a window box of herbs or some lacy curtains.

Also, I’ve elected not to show you the photos of the sink because they’re terrifying. I have a knack for using every dish in the kitchen and then walking away. Actually, as I write this I think those dishes are still in the sink.

Baking the cakes was straightforward. Just a heads up, they’re going to deflate quite a bit once you pull them out of the oven. Both of mine lost half an inch during cooling.

Go slow when slicing. Sure you’re going to crumble up the ugliest layer, but if you’re obsessive like me you’ll get a secret thrill knowing even the crumbled layer was level flat.

Is there anything more magical than a simple syrup? I think that name is insulting. There’s nothing simple going on there. With just a little heat you can go from the thread stage all the way to a hard-crack. A few degrees more and you’re making dark, complex sugars, specifically caramel, a confectionary that eludes me as aggressively as pudding.

Watch the sugar syrup like a hawk, especially if you don’t have a candy thermometer. I turned my back for fifteen seconds tops and it jumped from 235° F to 250° F. It was fine, but if I hadn’t been in the room I would have been forced to start over.

Pro tip: there is no non-messy way to get that sugar solution into the egg whites. I poured most of it into the mixing bowl and then tried to scrape the congealing remains. I ended up flinging globs of firm-ball stage sugar everywhere (a screaming nightmare to clean up). Then I realized it was stretching in long, wet threads from the pot to the mixing bowl to the spoon to my mouth (it looked tasty) to the sink to the floor and then back to the pot. It was like I had been trapped in the web of an enormous sucrose Shelob. That’s right, two LotR references and counting. That’s what happens when you watch all three movies in a row. You go insane.

Anyway, look at those stiff peaks. Is that a meringue in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Don’t be too generous with the frosting between the layers. It takes a shocking amount of frosting to cover this sucker.

This part drove me crazy. Having created an absolutely perfect, bleach-white cake, I had to smear crumbs all over it. This is another stage where you will not be graded on neatness. I tried meticulously arranging the crumbs a pinch at a time, but even I couldn’t handle that much neurotic control. I ended up just throwing fistfuls of crumbs in the general direction of the cake, the whole time trying to convince myself that there’s a certain symmetry to total chaos.

If you wanted to skip this last step it wouldn’t be hard, just make it a four layer cake and spread the frosting thinner.

The real test is always taste. I’m giving it full marks. I prefer cold, fudgy cake and that’s exactly what this is. The frosting is super foamy and similar to marshmallow fluff. This monster is extremely filling. A thick slice of cake with a glass of milk would make a magnificent elevenses.