I had some friends over for burgers and beer to celebrate the end of summer. Not that that’s really anything to celebrate, but it was an excuse to have burgers and drink beer. Not that it takes much to inspire that behavior.
Anyway. I also made dessert. From scratch. This weekend, the past couple of years, has traditionally been the weekend for Shakes in the Park up at Carter Barron. Not this year, which also had the unfortunate side effect of me not baking my famous $40-Brownies. Yeah, I said $40-Brownies ‘cause that’s how much the ingredients cost. Imagine if you will a confectionary concoction containing not one, not two, but two and a half pounds of chocolate and not a measly dozen, but 16 eggs (among other secret ingredients). It's enough to stop your heart
Wait. Wait! WAIT! C’mon back to me. It’s OK, the $40-Brownies have a way of doing that to a person. Just wipe that little bit drool off your face. So, instead of the $40-Brownies, I had to come up with something new. Something different. Something, dare I say, challenging?
This is what I came up with. Behold, the Smith Island Cake. A cake so famous, the NYT wrote about it almost a month before our local rag.
Doesn’t look like much, does it eh? A little lopsided and, perhaps, and very humble looking cake. But wait till you cut into it, that’s when the delicious magic starts. This is what you see when you cut into it.
Nine layers of cake and nine layers of delicious chocolate icing. Eighteen layers in all. Eighteen layers of cakey, chocolaty yumminess. I swear some of my friends started chanting like third-graders, “Cut the cake! Cut the cake!”And so I did.
And I looked upon it and it was good.
For those of you adventurous enough, click here for the recipe. Note: The only thing I changed is I did half again as much icing, i.e. 12 ounces of evaporated milk, 3 cups of sugar etc. etc. Trust, you’ll need it to cover this monster.
12 comments:
Foggy, that cake was SO delicious... but I *really* do not want to know all the evil things it has, it was way to sinful and ignorance is bliss... (do you have any leftovers?)
It was quite delicious! Maybe these can be part of a new business venture...
Wow! Color me impressed!
Titania - No evil in my baking. Just good natural stuff.
Brando - Thanks. As for the business, well, I enjoy baking too much to ruin it with money.
Brett - Coloring done.
I was already sad that I couldn't make it, but now doubly so. And I may be drooling a bit at that cake...just a little...
Dang! That looks good! *drool*
Liebchen - There's always next time.
lacochran - Perhaps I should also put up a picture of a napkin for all the virtual drool.
Holy crap! That looks awesome. On a scale of 1 to 10, how hard was it?
Sarah - It was awesome. It's probably a 4 or so. Mainly it's repetitive ... unless you have 10 cake pans. I only have three so I had to bake the cakes in three groups. The icing is simplicity itself.
Wow...
My grandmother makes something similar to the $40 Brownie, though I have no idea how much it actually costs. All I know it's something like 7 big bars of chocolate and a handful of eggs for about... an A4-size brownie.
It's just... amazing.
But that cake! That sounds awesome too. I must convince my mum to make it.
Seb - Show her the picture, that should be all the convincing she needs. As I said before, it's very easy to make, just a wee bit time intensive. Unless you happen to have 10 9-inch cake pans, then it'd be easy. I must get myself some more cake pans. Speaking of cake pans, do you have 9-inch cake pans over there? Or are they all 23-centimeter pans?
You know, I'll have to ask my mum and get back to you on that one.
I think most of our cake pans (tins?) are about 9 inches.
Last I heard, 9 inches is about the same as 23 centimeters anyway, so it probably doesn't matter if it's a 9 inch or 23 centimeter cake tin.
Post a Comment