The Cake Slice: Mile-High Devil's Food Cake

My second month of participating in the Cake Slice Bakers group. And let me just tell you, the Chai Cake and this month's Mile-High Devil's Food Cake were out of this world good. I would highly recommend the book we are baking out of - Sky High: Irrisistible Tripple-Layer Cakes. Go get it!!!

I LOVED this cake. I ate almost the whole slice below for breakfast this morning (oink oink). The cake is very rich chocolate and moist, and fudgy, and delicious. It is so good, it doesn't need frosting (IMO). I made it lactose free by substituting lactose free margarine for the buttter. This is going to be my go-to chocolate cake recipe from now on, can't wait to try it as cupcakes.

The frosting, well if you have seen the many other Cake Slice baker's cakes this month, you'll notice mine is a little flat in the frosting department. I wasn't aiming for the slim and trim look though (because come on, this is a decadent tripple-layer chocolate cake OK). Aparently, lactose free margarine does not work as a good substitution in Italian meringue buttercream. It was like soup, no matter how long I tried to whip the heck out of it (maybe that was part of the problem too??). Don't know, but I had to add powdered sugar and meringue powder, and stick it in the fridge to get it think enough to frost (barely).

I didn't love the brown sugar frosting either (tasted like butter flavor to me - so I added in vanilla bean paste, which helped). So, next time I think I will stick with regular american buttercream. And, someday I will get up the courage to try SMBC, because we all know Cassie of How to Eat a Cupcake swears by it, and if you read her blog, you know she has authority in that department. Click the link below for the recipe. Cassie, can you make SMBC lactose free?

PRINTED RECIPE