Today’s my birthday! Yay! Husband will be posting my bday dessert later, but in the meantime, I thought I’d share a bit of advice that I’ve accumulated over my 25 years… Sometimes Mom is right. Just sometimes though.
Yesterday I baked 2 devils food cakes for a bday celebration at Husband’s workplace. These really were little devils to make. The cakes turned out exactly as I’d hoped, but the process of making them made me sprout a few grays. Take a look at my recipe at the end of the baking process.
My mother always disliked the end of my cooking adventures in her kitchen. Splatters and spoons lying everywhere, a sinkful of dishes, grime coated stove, you get the picture. I’m of the the clean at the end crew, which displeased my clean-as-you-go mother. Martha Stewart’s Moist Devil’s Food cake was the fiesta of the year for the microscopic ants that time to time parade through my kitchen tooting their horns and tossing confetti into the air. The floor was coated several times with cocoa powder and milk, the chocolate ganache tipped over in the freezer while still in a liquid state, and during cleanup, a batter coated spoon dove out of the bowl and onto the rug. This entire mess was made even more frustrating by the fact that the KitchenAid decided to take a day off. There’s a lot of batter involved in making these devily cakes, and my hand mixer really fought to the finish.
These cakes turned out nicely. I knew I wanted to super stuff them with Oreo cream cheese filling, so I needed a sturdy cake–a butter cake. This recipe was reviewed as being slightly dry, so I added a bit of oil and it worked great. A strong but moist chocolatey devil’s food cake. I’d make it again, especially for tall layer cakes. The recipe says to make it as 3-8″ layers, but I opted for 2-10″ and it rose wonderfully.
Moist Devil’s Food Cake
cake adapted from Martha Stewart filling from 3B’s
2 sticks unsalted butter
1/4 c. oil
3/4 c. cocoa
1/2 c. hot coffee Use leftovers from the morning java
2 1/4c. sugar
1 T. vanilla
4 eggs
3 c. sifted cake flour
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1c. milk
Ganache
1 c. chocolate, chopped Or chips, if you must
2/3 c. whipping cream
Filling
12 Oreos
1-8oz. cream cheese
1/2 c. sugar
2 c. whipped cream or Cool Whip
additional Oreos for garnish
** To hasten the prep, measure out your ingredients ahead. Otherwise, messes occur.
1. Preheat to 350. Butter 3-8″ pans and line bottoms with parchment. Grease parchment and coat pans lightly with cocoa powder. Set aside.
2. In a small bowl or measuring cup, whisk cocoa into hot coffee. It will become pastelike. Now stir in milk. Set aside.
3. Sift dry ingredients together. Set aside.
4. Beat butter until smooth. Add oil and sugar and beat until lightens and gets fluffy-3 minutes.
5. Add eggs to butter, one at a time, along with vanilla. Scrape bowl as needed.
6. Add dry ingredients to butter 3 times, alternating with cocoa mixture, beginning and ending with flour mix.
One of the little devils cooling (I made mine in springform pans)8. Remove from oven and cool 15 minutes in pan. Turn cakes onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
9. Make ganache: microwave cream until just barely simmering (1:30-2min). Add chocolate and let rest 30 seconds. Stir to combine and place in refrigerator.
10. Make filling: beat cheese and sugar until well combined. Fold in whipped cream and cookies.
11. Assembly: Place one cake on cake stand (or plate). Top with half of the Oreo filling. Plop on the next cake and top with the rest of the Oreo filling. Turn final cake onto the cake tower. Return to ganache to check consistency. If you want the drizzle effect, simply spoon ganache over the cakes when it’s about the consistency of egg whites. For whipped ganache (my choice) wait until it’s fairly similar in density to the cake batter. Whip like cream and frost the top of the cake. Top with additional cookie pieces and dig right in!
I try to clean as I go but it doesn’t always work out!
Thanks for the shout out! I’m not fond of chocolate cake but the filling was mighty tasty!
~ingrid