Cake #3 - Devil's Food Cake with Chocolate Orange Frosting - Mindy's turn

My turn. Let me start by saying that this was one of the cakes in our list of 30 that I was not too excited to make. For one...I am just not down with the floral notes in chocolate. Lavender as ingredient in anything but a sock drawer satchel didn't appeal to me. I'm also not a fan of the chocolate and orange combination.

But you know what? The fundamentals of this cake were so strong, so awesome, that I really liked it in spite of the lavender and orange. Go figure. I guess I need to take my own advice - the advice I'm giving constantly to the five year old; how will you know if you like it if you don't try it?

I thought that I was going to get out of using the lavender due to an inability to find it, but lo and behold, my local Whole Foods had it in bulk. For a mere $.26 I came home with more than I needed. Like Sherie, I also had the problem of grinding the lavender, but I put my helper to work on it, and she did a great job.

Unlike Sherie, I didn't strain out any particles, but it all seemed rather uniform. And, I opted for a different cake form: the pumpkin. We have Halloween Fever in these parts, and the idea that we'd make the cake in the shape of a pumpkin was met with great enthusiasm. This shape added another 15 minutes or so baking time to the cake.

Do you know this trick? When you're making a chocolate cake, rather than dust your pans with flour, dust with cocoa powder! Thank you, Cooks Illustrated for that awesome, and frequently used, quick tip!

It is a crying shame that I do not have a picture of the cakes after they came out of the pan. Golden brown, springy, moist....perfect. Really, this might be one of the greatest chocolate cakes that I've ever made. Frankly, it didn't need any frosting (oh, but the frosting! more on that in a minute). A light dusting of powdered sugar would have made the cake plenty decadent.

Ah, but the frosting. Hands down, this might be one of the best recipes I have ever encountered for butter cream frosting. I haven't made enough recipes for butter cream frosting to know why or how it was different, but it was amazing. I could have sat with a bowl of it. EVEN WITH THE ORANGE. I know! I thought that I would hate the orange flavor, but I actually liked it. In full disclosure, I didn't use quite as much as the recipe called for. One orange yielded not quite a full tablespoon of zest, and I opted to not zest a second one.

Not quite a tablespoon, but close enough.

And, we did not have any orange liqueur or Grand Marnier, so I skipped it. The orange flavor was plenty enough for me, but I am curious now to know what it would taste like in full flavor. One of the most interesting things about the frosting was the addition of a half teaspoon of coarse kosher salt. The frosting definitely had a salt edge that took the edge off the sweetness of the chocolate.

I include a photograph of our final, decorated cake with a word to the wise. One really should let the cake (as EVERY SINGLE RECIPE EVER has stated) cool fully before frosting. But, I made this late afternoon, and we wanted to be able to have it after dinner for dessert. I thought that the cake was cooled enough, but my frosting started melting, and I had to use a skewer to hold the top and bottom of the cake together. Frankly, with the melting chocolate icing, it looked disgusting.

Oh, but the taste! I ate a piece every day for six days until yesterday when I threw it out - not because it had gone bad, but because I just could not stop myself. Make it. You will love it too.