Guess What Flavor of Cake This Is...

No, really, I'll bet you'll never figure it out.

I decided to make a chocolate cake that was a cross with a brownie. I was super-excited because I found such a cake in Marcel Desaulnier's Death By Chocolate Cake book over the weekend. It actually didn't call for chocolate in the batter (except as chocolate chips added at the very end), so I melted down some Lindt 85% cacao with a little butter from the recipe, popped it in after the eggs, but before the flour mixture.

The brownie cake turned out ok. However, it was too rich and dense underneath the American Buttercream and the fondant. Foisted on the hapless co-workers as usual, hence the stupendously lame decorating job, which amuses the hell out of me.

So it was about 11pm on Monday night, and I was done trying to figure out how to dress up this cake. I attempted to cover it in frosting, like any normal person making a cake. But I couldn't get the thickness right, and it wasn't smooth, and I didn't like it. So I scraped it off, gathered together my elderly (but ok to eat, in fact still tasty) bits of fondant, and pressed on.

Plus I messed up the frosting on the side when I grabbed for the turntable and missed. Sad part is that this is still the best side of the cake, more or less. Good part is that it was a fine way to spend my snowday.

Details of the cake:
One batch of Anniversary Brownie Cake from Death By Chocolate Cake, baked in my still-fabulous, still-new-ish Calphalon 9 x 13 pan.

Cut the cake in half to get two 9 x 6.5 cakes, about 1" tall, each, maybe a little taller.
Stacked the small cakes so that I had one 9 x 6.5 cake with 2 layers, about 2+" total height.

Made a 1/4 batch of Peggy Weaver's (American) Buttercream I recipe, and added Tocani Raspberry syrup. Turned the thing a horrid shade of baby-pink. Blech.

Fondant dyed with Betty Crocker's gel colors.

Fondant made 3+ weeks before decorating.
Cake made 1 day before serving.
Cake layers assembled and crumb coated 1 day before serving.
Cake decorated and assembled the night before serving.

Bottom line: I forgot to use the Magi-cake strips! Aaaargh! The sides were a little too crusty, like a normal brownie. Well, whatever, no brownie cake for the wedding anyway. I think I might just make a very basic chocolate cake next time and see where that gets me.