TWD - Devil's Food White-Out (cup)Cake

The Tuesdays with Dorie bakers are making the Cover Cake!

We've been lusting after this cake for months, with its billowy white frosting and dusting of devil's food crumbs. Fortunately for us, Stephanie of Confessions of a City Eater selected it for this week's recipe.

The timing of this created somewhat of a dilemma for me. My boss, whom I adore, has a birthday Weds. I wanted to make it for her birthday but that wouldn't enable me to post on time. I missed the floating islands so I was determined to make this cake. Suddenly, it hit me...

Cupcakes. Devil's food white-out cupcakes. No layer splitting. No trying to sneak a cake into work and having people think I was wrecking their diets. No leftovers. Perfect.

I made a half recipe of both the cake and the frosting. I used mini chocolate chips and 2% milk (at 6 PM Sunday, Safeway had either a quart of whole milk or a half gallon of buttermilk, and I only needed 1/4 cup for half a recipe) so I went for the pint of 2% milk. The cake batter was easy peasy (and yummy, too). The cupcakes baked for about 20 minutes until they tested done. I made the frosting in the morning before going to work. The P&Q had me prepared to hover over the thermometer and be ready for it to shoot up to 242 degrees after taking forever to get to 235. This indeed happened, but I had no trouble at all incorporating the sugar syrup into the beaten egg whites. I whipped it like crazy for about 3 minutes until it cooled to room temperature. It was glossy, puffy and magical looking. It tasted...OK. I crumbled one of the muffins for the crumb topping and applied a liberal dollop of frosting on the remaining 11 cupcakes. The crumb topping meant no need to make the frosting look good, but I made it kind of snow capped mountain-esque in honor of all of the snow the Sierra has gotten in the last three days.

In the interest of being able to tell all of you how they were, I ate one, like, immediately. So it was only 7:15 AM, so what? I was willing to sacrifice so you would know the outcome. You're welcome.

The verdict? These are insanely good cupcakes. You know how chocolate cupcakes can sometimes be dry? How the frosting can be too sweet, and maybe they're decorated beautifully, but the frosting flavor disappoints? Not these babies. They are so much fun to eat with the billowy meringue frosting and deep chocolate flavor. You turn them every which way to take a bite, and still have a small cloud of frosting left at the end. Not too sweet, not too firm. Just right.

I will definitely make these again. Amy Ruth suggested using peanut butter in the filling. I saw another TWDer suggested making the frosting with some coffee. Both sound amazing. I wouldn't use the mini chips again (I don't really like the flavor), so I would chop a good quality semi-sweet chocolate in their place.

You must try this! If you're a chocolate lover or have one in your life, this is the cake for you. Thanks for picking it for us, Stephanie! If you'd like the recipe, you'll find it at Stephanie's blog. Or buy yourself the book Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. It's an amazing book with so many irresistible recipes that there are approximately 400 of us cooking our way through it and blogging about our experiences.

Please stop by next week when we make the Caramel Crunch Bars. They promise to be easy and delicious!