Tuesdays with Dorie: Devils Food White Out Cake

This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe was selected by Stephanie of Confessions of a City Eater . She chose the Devils Food White Out Cake, which is the cover recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours. I think a lot of people were waiting for this recipe to be picked and I was very excited to try the recipe. One of my colleagues is about to have a baby, so this was the perfect cake to take for the celebration of her last day at work before the baby comes.

I actually had to buy new pans to make this cake, since in calls for 8 inch round pans and my pans are 9 inch. I luckily had a gift card to the kitchen store so I was able to add some nice new pans to my collection. This recipe is a fudge chocolate cake. You cake it and then split the layers. One of the layers you crumble up and use it as a topping. My cakes baked up nicely (I’m sure because of my nice new pans) and I cooled them overnight. I hadn’t split cake layers in quite a few years and I was happy that it worked so well. My cakes looked really nice.

I typically use a simple buttercream when I frost cakes, but this recipe called for a marshmallow-y frosting make of whipped egg whites and a sugar syrup. The recipe cautioned you about making sure that the sugar mixture gets to the right temperature to add to the egg whites when they are whipped. The recipe said to start mixing the egg whites when the syrup was just a few degrees from being done. This seemed off to me and I started whipping the egg whites when I started heating the sugar syrup. I’m glad I did, since my syrup got to temperature before the whites were stiff. In the end my sugar syrup got a bit hotter than it should have, but it turned out ok.

Assembling the cake was unexpectedly easy! The frosting was nice and light so it spread easily. I usually make extra frosting when icing cakes because I need the extra frosting to successfully cover the cake. I had plenty of icing and I was able to fill the cake and frost it using a generous amount of frosting. It looked great! I put the crumbs over the entire cake, not just the sides.

I haven’t cut the cake yet, so I can’t comment on the final assembled cake. The frosting was tasty and the cake crumbs taste good, so I think this will be a big success. I had a hard time photographing this cake, so I’m sorry that my photos aren’t very good. Hopefully I will be able to take some more photos once the cake has been cut.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 247