The Cake That Almost Ate Me

Now, Flock, you know that I don't tend to do things half way. If I did, you wouldn't see them posted here, at any rate. Well, since I've been off alcohol (loud hurrahs, please, three weeks today!) I've been substituting like mad — mainly sugary things, which is not at all good for my blood sugar, which I've been measuring rocketing through the roof (17, anyone?)

Yes, it's been cake, then ice cream after dinner (dinner is my only meal of the day — strike one more for bad eating habits) and lots of orange juice/Perrier coolers.

So natch, I decide to go the whole way and make my OWN Death By Chocolate cake, having tired of having my eyes bug out at the prices of these "Opera" cakes from places like de Gascogne and Duc de Lorraine (no English, the arrogant bastards). We're talking $40 for a decent medium-sized chocolate cake (I forget the name) from Duc, and I didn't even bother exploring Gascogne.

But Brigitte pointed out that these places make these cakes so we don't have to, and I grudgingly have to admit that she's right. Let me just state for the record: making multi-layered chocolate cakes from the best ingredients is NOT DIFFICULT. However, it's finicky, messy, time-consuming and expensive. It's the same with baking your own bread, minus the expensive. Why bother making four baguettes, taking about a day and a half, what with all the buying, the prep, the kneading the waiting, the rising, the baking, the waiting — to chew on a fairly mediocre piece of bread that you can get better for $2 at the grocery store down the street?

The forces arrayed against you are numerous: you have an oven that is predictably the right temperature only if you consider "give or take 100 degrees" a precise recipe instruction. The kitchen equipment you have on hand is about as useful vis-a-vis constructing a gourmet cake as is a rabble of fifteen and sixteen-year olds going off to fight the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

And it's mighty costly. Unless you just happen to have a bagful of 50% cacao Callebaut chocolate callets from Boutique Chocolats Privilège on hand, along with a half-pound of Valhrona cocoa powder, you're looking at maybe $50 right there. Add in the $25 bottle of Triple Sec that you had to buy because they have no taster-size bottles, and that you're actually lucky because the Cointreau that's called for in the recipe is actually $7 more expensive, and your wallet is looking decidedly floppy. Plus the springform cake pans and the cake spatula and the almond slivers . . . it makes that Duc de Lorraine Mousse Royal look like a Lada instead of your Prius in terms of expense.

And . . . it only took two days to make this cake when they probably churn out one every two hours but on that score, if I'd been expeditious I'd have been able to make it all in one day. At any rate, here it is in pictures; recipe to follow.

Butter and flour (left) and cocoa powder mixture

Cake batter divided among three unequal springform pans

Baked cakes; note supremely even baking in my professional GE Mark Zero oven

The frosted cake. This thing is heavy. I'm praying it's just the serving platter.

The first slice. It was delicious!

Recipe coming shortly!
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Some Tasting Notes, Feb. 22


Brigitte noticed it first: "It tastes great, but it's dry!" It is dry. It's extremely tasty — don't get me wrong. But it's crumbly. In other words, if you try to cut a slice, at least two days later (it may have dried in the refrigerator) it crumbles under the knife as you cut.

I douse it with home-made whipped cream, so it all comes out okay, but now I'm wondering what puts the "moist" in a cake. No doubt more chemicals! More butter? Dunno. Maybe a pastry type out there will have a suggestion.

I won't be making this thing or anything like it again any time soon. We figure the cake cost about $50 in all to make.

Make next time it'll be a Dutch Apple Crumb pie! Yeah! I like that idea! But I'll still post this recipe soon.