Drankin & Bakin: Devils Food Cake

I love chocolate cake. I mean, I REALLY love chocolate cake. The more chocolate the better. The darker the chocolate, the better. So as it often happens in my house, I get a craving for something and I must go bake it right away. Last night a craving for Devil's Food Cake hit and it would not be ignored. I also just so happened to have a few Guiness in the fridge (shocking I know) so this blog post was born. In the midst of getting the kids ready for bed I started mixing up the ingredients and popped the cake pans in the oven right before "lights out" for the babes.

To make things even more fun, I decided to use my Wilton Mini cake pans. They are tiny little ones, that come in a group of 5.

This way the cake bakes faster because the layers aren't as thick and it looks really cool to have a five layer cake. Normally I would carve the excess off the layers so that they lay nice and flat, for a cleaner presentation, but I wanted something a little more rustic.

The pictures make it look huge! But really one slice is about the same amount of cake as a slice of a normal two layer cake. I love to try different recipes, but I always come back to my tried and true Devil's Food Cake recipe from my OLD Better Homes & Gardens cookbook- the first cookbook I ever owned. My mom gave it to me forever ago and it has never failed me. This recipe is easy and foolproof. The only change here is that since I was using the mini pans I only needed to bake the layers for 15 mins. Seriously, if you're having a chocolate cake craving, you can't beat a homemade cake in 15 minutes!

The icing is the most simple chocolate ganache ( I use the term loosely, I'm sure a real pastry chef would disagree that this is a true "ganache"). 

         8 oz semi sweet chocolate chips

3/4 cup milk

Heat the milk on the stove til it comes to a simmer

pour over chocolate chips in a glass bowl

whisk until smooth and let cool for 10 minutes

you're done.

Enjoy!!!