Wednesday, February 17

S'more cake

Here we go again, another idea taken too far in the name of food. What idea is this? Well, St. Alton did graham crackers, home made marshmallows, and pound cake within a three month span of my wonky memory. Put together with Ina Garden's chocolate buttercream icing and the goofy Wilton heart-shaped fill-in cake pans, and here's another experiment in the making.

In short, I took the pound cake recipe, then adjusted the flour and sugar to match what was in the graham cracker recipe. I maintained the ratio of the flour ingredients and the sugar ingredients, and ended with 13 oz. graham flour, 3 oz. AP flour, 9 1/8 oz. brown sugar, and 6 7/8 oz. molasses. The butter and eggs were the same.

Oh, just as a side note, when it calls for you to grease and flour a pan, use butter. Not nonstick spray. Take a guess why.


I was in for a rude surprise when I filled the first pan and one recipe filled... one pan. A quick whipping together of a second recipe filled the other pan plus 6 cupcakes. So keep in mind that this cake is upwards of 2 pounds of butter right now. Stick all of this in a 350 degree oven. Pull the cupcakes at 30 minutes in, or less. Start testing the actual cakes around 1:45.

Now for the chocolate buttercream. Accent on the butter.

Yeah, that's a few tablespoons into a pound and a half of butter. That's six @#$%ing sticks of butter. Mark this down, because this may be the only time you'll ever see these words in this blog: This may be too much butter.

The heart-shaped cavity is filled with marshmallow. I started with a full recipe, and there's plenty left over. But that's okay. I'll use it.

For example, as little garnishes on the cupcakes.

So... there's also this little issue of the crowns of the cake. You know, the part you have to cut off in order to level the cake. Well, we ate one because it wasn't that big. But the other one, well, it needs another application

On the left: half of the crown laid out as a cutting pattern on top of some of the leftover marshmallow. On the right: the other half frosted with chocolate buttercream. You know what's coming next.

It looks like a giant Oreo, but so, so much better.

Ah. The taste. I knew I was forgetting something.

Well, it does taste like a graham cracker, a little. I think I'll try honey next time because the molasses leads to a heavy texture. The marshmallow, well, if you have ever had home made marshmallows, you're going to have a hard time stomaching store-bought ever again. And the chocolate buttercream. Um. I have a quart of it left over. The recipe says "makes 4 cups," but that's a filthy, dirty, undercutting lie. It makes something more like 7. I'm going to have to figure out something to do with it....