Sunday, January 20, 2008

The Devil is in the Details!


Disaster!!!! I made this Devil's Food Cake today, which I saw Martha make on a re-run over the holidays. It looked so easy! And so delicious! And so impressive!

Not. Don't know yet. And not.

I did all the prep. With Martha recipes it's always very important to prep exactly as the recipe states otherwise you are going to get to somewhere in the middle of the instructions and want to plunge a serrated knife into your heart.

This cake is supposed to be 3 eight inch layers, but I only have 2 eight inch pans and 1 ten inch pan, (you can already see where this is going), I made it in the three pans I have with clever plans to cut the 10" one down to size when it had cooled. As you can see by the two layered cake in the picture, the cutting down didn't go that well. The kids are eating that "layer" after dinner tonight.

Then the frosting. 1 quart of heavy cream, 24oz of semi-sweet chocolate chips - cook over medium high heat for 30 minutes until thickend. 45 mins later, still not thickened enough. So I thought that it would probably stiffen up in the fridge while it cooled down, also you add 1 teaspoon of light corn syrup. I couldn't be more wrong. Runny, runny, runny.

Anyway, I assembled the cake, the top cracked, I iced it anyway and I'm going to eat some after dinner while I watch the finale of the Amazing Race. I'll update on the taste later.

Here is the recipe if you want to give it a try. I'd love to know if anyone has success with the frosting!

UPDATE: It's OK. I'm not blown away by the taste - although I think if I'd gotten the icing to really thicken up it would have made a huge difference.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

oops... you took a beautiful photo of it... I hate that- when so much effort goes into something and it doesn't come out how you pictured it would.
BTW Cathie, lovely interface/template, whatever you call it on the new blog. blogger looks very crisp and preofessional. I'll have to remember to change the link on my blogroll:)

Cathie said...

Thanks SweetRosie! I did have very grand visions for how this was going to turn out - hahahaha. I really need to rein in my expectations next time and just hope for the best!

Uma said...

Hi Cathie
You have a wonderful blog.
I have tried the Martha Stewart's devil's food cake with Mrs.Milman's chocolate frosting. It came out perfect. I have posted the recipe in my blog too.I loved your Nana's sponge cake recipe...gonna try it soon. Will let you know how it turned out.