Chocolate Blackout Cake

Written by

·

First off, sorry for the lack of posts, but foodgawker has been "eating" up all of our time. We hope to get back on a more frequent schedule soon. Second, we had our one year blogiversary at the beginning of the month, but sadly we didn’t get chance to post about it. Hungry Bear did make this incredible chocolate blackout cake to celebrate the milestone.

She used a blackout cake recipe from Sweet Stuff: Karen Barker’s American Desserts, but substituted bittersweet Valrhona chocolate for the semisweet. The cake is absolutely delicious, but it’s time consuming to make because of the many steps… coffee brewing, pudding creating, cake baking, cookie crumbling and icing making. We loved the pudding and the cake part. There was an extra layer of unused cake and it was fantastic by itself.

The icing tasted good, but we didn’t like the hardened texture and it was difficult to work with. If we had to make it again, we would use Gale Gand’s fudgy chocolate frosting instead. Or we would skip the icing, double the pudding quantity, use all four cake layers and top it with pudding.

Still, it was one of the best chocolate cakes we’ve made and definitely worth the effort!

hocolate Blackout Cake with Cookie Crumb

[tags]chocolate, bittersweet, valrhona, pudding, icing, cake[/tags]

43 responses to “Chocolate Blackout Cake”

  1. Lydia (The Perfect Pantry) Avatar

    Happy blog birthday — and thank you for all the work you’re putting into Foodgawker. Love the chocolate cake, and would be happy to relieve you of any pesky leftovers!!

    Like

  2. Jude Avatar

    Mmm Valrhona… Sounds insanely rich and I want it. Thanks for that link to Gand’s frosting recipe.

    Like

  3. kickpleat Avatar

    wow, that photo made me gasp. looks amazing.

    Like

  4. lori Avatar

    Well, it certainly looks worth all your efforts! It’s gorgeous!

    Like

  5. PaniniKathy Avatar

    Great to have you back!! That last photo is just gorgeous – wonder if I have any chocolate around here…

    Like

  6. Amanda Avatar

    What a way to come back. That cake makes my chocolate-craving body perk right up. I have never used chocolate pudding in the middle before. Was it stabilized with gelatin?

    Like

  7. Rosa Avatar

    What a wonderful cake! I love that name… Delicious!

    Cheers,

    Rosa

    Like

  8. Erin Avatar

    That cake looks seriously problematic…as in it will “probably” make me fat since I’ll eat the whole thing in one sitting 😉

    Like

  9. saucytart Avatar

    Yummm. Gotta try it. Thanks for the link to foodgawker. I grabbed myself a widget. Your site? it’s gorgeous.

    Like

  10. F. Pepper Avatar

    This cake looks fabulous – happy 1 year anniversary! Thanks for all the work on foodgawker – it makes me hungry when I know I shouldn’t be.

    Like

  11. grace Avatar

    i firmly believe that one can never consume too much chocolate. this cake is glorious. beautiful and decadent and delightful–bravo. 🙂

    Like

  12. Nicisme Avatar

    Happy blog birthday! The cake looks wonderful!

    Like

  13. Dragon Avatar

    Oh how lovely! I love the shine on the icing. Great job!

    Like

  14. Kevin Avatar

    That looks so decadent and chocolaty and good!

    Like

  15. Mary Avatar

    Holy Hannah, that looks good! Happy blog birthday!

    Like

  16. Patricia Scarpin Avatar

    I could get addicted to this cake. And my jeans would never fit me again! 🙂

    Beautiful!

    Like

  17. Tony Avatar

    love the looks of that blackout cake! Gale Gand is amazing – I want to eat at the restaurant she cooks at in Chicago!

    Like

  18. Mrs. L Avatar

    Happy belated blog anniversary! That cake looks delicious.

    Like

  19. […] of Sunday Nite Dinners (check out his recent post about Chocolate Blackout Cake!) and Jen of Life Begins at Thirty, both like Microplaners, although Jen did not want to duplicate […]

    Like

  20. Mari Avatar

    This looks like a dream of a chocolate cake, I’m going to add it to my “to bake” list!

    Like

  21. canarygirl Avatar

    Sweet jeebus this looks good. faints

    Like

  22. C Avatar
    C

    Happy 1 year Blogiversary! I am not patient enough to make this cake, but it looks SO delicious!

    Like

  23. White On Rice Couple Avatar

    I just need to add a TON of candles to that chocolate beauty and it’ll be my birthday cake!

    Great job on FoodGawker Chuck, I always wonder if you ever sleep!

    Like

  24. Mrs. L Avatar

    Happy belated blogiversary and OH MY WORD, that cake! All chocolate goodness looking. Wow. It looks delicious!

    Like

  25. Caitlin Avatar
    Caitlin

    Oh yeah. That definitely satisfied my need for chocolate cake. Made it with a girlfriend, we went the more pudding, no icing route and heartily recommend it. We ended up making 2 batches of pudding to cover the whole thing. We forgot to add the 1/2 cup milk to the dry ingredients in the first batch of pudding and came up with a delicious chocolate pudding/icing (pudcing?) which we used as the outside icing. Yummy-ness all round!

    Last note: pudding is WAY easier to make than I thought it would be!! Thanks for this recipe and happy blogiversary!

    Like

  26. KB Avatar

    This is my favorite cake, and well worth the trouble. I’m convinced it has to be this time-consuming to make to keep everyone from eating it all the time.

    Like

  27. sharon Avatar

    Congrats on the blogaversary and thanks for your hard work on Foodgawker. I’d like to stick my finger through that icing and get a nice taste!

    Like

  28. Chefectomy Avatar

    Chuck,

    First off, great work on Food Gawker, very commendable what you are doing for the food blogging community. The anniversay cake looks scrumptious, great photos.

    –Marc

    Like

  29. lalaine Avatar

    Darn! Darn! Darn! I now have car keys in my hand and ready to drive to a bakeshop so I can get an inferior chocolate cake. I have to satisfy this chocolate-craving monster you woke up in me! Thanks a lot!

    Like

  30. paresh Avatar

    delicious cake, thanks for sharing.

    Like

  31. elbseattle Avatar
    elbseattle

    So where’s the freakin’ recipe???

    Like

  32. Haley Avatar

    I’m Haley, Key Ingredient’s Chief Blogger. We would like to feature this recipe and photo on our blog. We realize it is taken from another source, but we’ll be sure to note that…we just feel you’ve done a great job putting this meal together! Please email haleyglasco@gmail.com if interested. Thanks 🙂

    Haley

    Like

  33. claudia (cook eat FRET) Avatar

    so like IF i was ever going to make a chocolate cake. this would be it. it looks freakin AMAZING…

    Like

  34. Leonor Avatar

    This cake looks awesome! And the icing must be amazing… not to talk about Valrhona semisweet chocolate

    Like

  35. James Effs Avatar

    a chocoholics dream. It looked so good I am going to have myelf a piece of cake, ill be right back 🙂

    Like

  36. Jennifer Avatar

    Chuck, this is the third or fourth time I’ve come here to visit this cake. At some point, I’ll have to move beyond visitation and make it myself.

    Like

  37. maggie Avatar

    this looks just incredible—I could practically lick that photo.

    Like

  38. Kristen Avatar

    OMG – that looks AMAZING! Yum! That would cure any chocolate craving, I’m sure!

    Like

  39. jeanne Avatar
    jeanne

    IT WOULD BE NICE TO POST THE RECEIPT OF THE CAKE THAT WAS FEATURED ON THE COUNTRY COOK’s SUNDAY PROGRAM.

    Like

  40. Jesse Avatar

    Hey. This is a delicious cake. Thanks for showcasing it!

    One question: how did you get your pudding so firm? I’ve made this twice now using the recipes you linked and the pudding always looks like normal pudding (delicious!). It doesn’t come out firm enough to behave like icing and form a distinct layer in the cake.

    Any tips?

    Like

  41. Chocolate Blackout Cake Revisited | Sunday Nite Dinner Avatar

    […] been chocolate blackout cake obsessed since the first time we made it. The cake and pudding are fantastic on their own, but […]

    Like

  42. Bea Avatar
    Bea

    Hello, I made this cake with my sister in law and everyone loved it. We actually used the icing as well but had another layer of pudding on top. Yum!

    Like

  43. Susan Avatar
    Susan

    I use the extra cake layer to crumble on the cake instead of the cookies. One less ingredient and cost. This cake is Delicious

    Like

Leave a reply to claudia (cook eat FRET) Cancel reply