TWD: Devil's Food White Out Cake

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have the cover cake.  Here it is.  

This is a three layer cake slathered with marshmallow frosting and coated with more cake crumbs.  Truthfully, what could be bad.

The cake is baked in two layers.  I would say for a Dorie recipe, it was medium fussy.  Funny story, I searched quite a few places trying to find the 8" cake pans that this recipe calls for. Other than slightly expensive options at Williams-Sonoma or the internet with resulting shipping charges, I was not having much luck.  And then I looked in one of my lesser-used cabinets.  And what do I find there, but a checkerboard cake set with, yup, 8" cake pans.  Woo hoo!

Anyway, back to the cake.  The cakes came out lovely and moist.  I didn't put them on a baking sheet.  I find that it doesn't bake as well on the bottom when I do that.  The layers are sliced in half.  I don't have a hard time doing this, though I know it can be daunting.  I just hold it in my hand and go at it with my long serrated knife.  Three of the four layers are used for the cake base. The fourth is crumbled and meant to be squished in the frosting.  That was actually nice because if you screwed up, it was still meant to be crumbled!

The frosting was new to me.  I wasn't part of the group when they made marshmallows, and I've never made marshmallow frosting.  The directions, I thought, were a little vague.  I know that you whip egg whites.  I know that you make a sugar syrup.  I know that you add them together.  When you add them together, however, was not very clear to me.  Regardless, my guessing seems to have worked.  I will say that I think I screwed up by adding the vanilla a little late to the frosting.  It ended up having a slightly alcohol taste to it.  Though, there was much wine drinking the night it was eating, so I'm not sure anyone noticed.  It ended up being easy to frost.  Again, the crumbs were a bonus.  If the frosting was a little crumby on the side, it didn't matter!

Here it is from the top.  It almost looks like Dorie's cake!

Here we are looking at it from the side.

And this is the inside.  Mmmmm.  This is where it stops looking like Dorie's cake.  I have to wonder if she had extra frosting somewhere to make it so thick in the middle.  Ah well.  I also discovered that it was definitely a little squishy when it was sliced.

I enjoyed this cake.  I'm not sure that I'll be rushing to make it again.  Mostly because I don't have a lot of occasions that call for cake, but also because I make a similar one that I like a little better.  I think the cakes are pretty close, but the other one is frosted with whipped cream and coated with toffee.  Winner.

Thank you Stephanie of Confessions of a City Eater for choosing this lovely cake.  Up next:  Caramel Crunch Bars.