TWD: Devil's Food - The Cover Cake

For Tuesdays with Dorie this week Stephanie at Confessions of a City Eater chose the Devils Food White Out Cake, located not only on pages 247-24

9 of Baking From My Home To Yours, but on the cover.  That is right.  Someone finally chose the cover cake! And me? I went and changed it all up anyway. It wasn't intentional though. For once.  Really. I swear.

For once, I had no intention of messing around with the recipe. I wanted to make that cake and make it look just like the one on the cover. There were just a few little (or not so little problems) in my way this time around. First off, you may have noticed that I have stalled on my Four S's for the last several posts. It isn't intentional, it is simply the fact that by the time I have had a few minutes to put together my TWD post, it has been late Monday

 night and I have been too tired and grumpy to really have much creative to say.

Long story short, for the past month, both of my boys have been sick, sick, sick, si

ck and those were the only four S's making it out of my kitchen. I won't get into a long list of problems, but suffice it to say, 2009 has been a crapper in the health department for us so far, and doesn't look to be getting better very soon.  In the mean time, TWD is the only blogging commitment I feel like I haven't failed on yet and want to keep it that way.

Which brings us right back to my Devil's Food White-Out Cake... or really, I should say, as A. called them, "our army of baby cakes." Since there was no way I was going to be able to deal with a huge 3-layer cake at our house with just me and two sick kids, and since A.'s Kindergarten Valentine's party was on Friday, I decided to make mini cupcakes for his class treat.

This recipe may very well be my new favorite chocolate cake recipe. It was simple to put together, with fantastic results, and the clincher here people? 

I SCREWED UP THE DIRECTIONS AND IT STILL WORKED FOR ME. 

In my sleep-deprived, tired and frustrated mind that equals love with a recipe for me. You see, I just couldn't seem to read the instructions (1) correctly and (2) all the way through, to save my life. So, even though chocolate was listed twice and there were instructions on what to do with it, and when to add it to the batter, it was just apparently too much for my brain.

So... what did I do? Well, as much as it pains me to admit this, I did finally at least catch the correct amount of chocolate for the recipe, but I just melted all of the chocolate with the boiling water, gave it a good stir and incorporated it at the point when the melted chocolate was suppose

d to be added. Toward the bottom of that paragraph of mixing directions is when I finally unfogged my brain long enough to figure out what I should have done. Basically, with my usual flair, just in time for it to be too late, and to hope for the best. All I can say is I am am grateful that Dorie's recipe seemed to be foolproof, 'cause this fool sure feels lucky that it all worked out.

The issues above are also the reason you are not seeing any beautiful, white, frothy frosting on my cupcakes. First, I just ran out of time since I was trying to frost the cupcakes to take to class, literally 15 minutes before I needed to be there, and second:

me + working with hot sugar syrup + sleep deprivation = bad idea written all over it.

So, I will definitely make this recipe again and will try to make the right frosting with it as well since I really wanted to try that too. For this go around, I made a little cocoa / whipped cream frosting that is always super fast and delicious that we love. The recipe was simple and made enough for all the cupcakes (incidentally, here that was 36 minis and 12 regular sized ones).

Don't forget to check out how everyone else's glorious cakes turned out today - visit the TWD blogroll!

Chocolate Whipped Frosting

1 cup cold heavy cream

1/4 cup cocoa powder (I used Dutch process)

2 cups sifted powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Whip all together til thick piping consistency (thicker than whipped cream) - about 3 minutes in stand mixer on medium-high.