Taste and Create: Black Devil's Food Cake Cure's What Ails You

If you have wondered where I have been, I adore you. If not, no harm no foul. I have been trying to accomplish something at work that was well overdue. (How long you ask? Don’t.) For this assignment, my goal was to compress centuries and centuries of history into very few words while keeping enough interesting details to make the drier ones palatable. To make the activity more difficult, I had a wonderful case of writer’s block and a realization that placing three words together appropriately was bringing me damn near physical pain. Picture me (I realize you don’t know me) sitting at my desk, spending hours drinking homemade Thai Iced coffee (yes, still have too much condensed milk at home), just staring at my computer screen. Fear of deadlines were well beyond me that this point. Luckily You Tube seems to have more Smiths videos than I ever thought existed, and thanks to Morrissey and Marr, the writer’s block slowly ebbed. By slowly, I mean, I felt like words were coming out of my brain in an angry trickle like crystallized honey from that cute little honey-bear’s head. Alas—they came out and the assignment has been turned in. Editting, retribution, recrimination could be ahead, but writer’s block seems over, and the blogging embargo is lifted.

Did I eat in my absence? Of course. I didn’t cook much, but Maybelle’s Dad stepped in. I did cook a little in hopes that food would be the panacea my writer’s brain needed. And, I believe I found it in High on the Hog’s Devil’s Food Cake. I made two half batches of her cake as cupcakes, and ate most of the lot myself. For the first, I followed her recipe faithfully. They were dense but moist. I topped them with vanilla, almond, pumpkin seed Swiss buttercream, because I had it kicking around. (Oh, yes, I have become someone who has buttercream hanging around in the fridge.)

For the second batch, I subbed very strong roiboos (red bush) tea for the water, decreased the chocolate slightly, and added cinnamon. I topped them with whipped cream frosting with white chocolate, curry powder, cinnamon, and a smidge of cocoa powder. These were definitely an exercise in gilding the lily because Temper’s were already delicious; but they didn’t not differ so much from the original recipe as to be unrecognizable. And, most importantly, they now top my list as being the breakfast of champions.