RHC: Double Chocolate Whammy Groom's Cake

Atlanta got hit with a winter storm this week, as you may have heard. Sunday night to Monday morning saw about 4-1/2 inches of snow and sleet at my house, and then it got cold, so the usual "gone in a couple of days" storm stuck around. This is the South where such events are rare and the equipment to deal with it isn't in place. Soooo....schools have been closed all week. (The kids next door are thrilled.) My office was closed 3 days, and opened late today (but I could work from home). All you guys from places where snow is a regular occurrence, please snicker quietly so I can't hear you.

Until some melting started yesterday I was housebound--I'm a Southern driver, and I know better than to get out on the roads when things are very snowy/icy. The cats were thrilled, as I must be staying home to provide extra attention and playtime for them, right? Or maybe it would be a good time to do some baking. I could have done a cake for the free choice week we're in, but I'm down to 5 cakes Marie has done that I haven't. The banana cake needed cream cheese, not on hand. No cream of coconut for the Heavenly Seduction coconut cake, no cream cheese for the Whipped Cream No-Bake Cheesecake (which sounded like way too much trouble in any case--custard? Italian meringue? Not this week, thanks). No piles of berries for the chocolate trifle or the berry shortcake. Not looking good...but there's the Double Chocolate Whammy Groom's Cake. Marie isn't going to schedule it for HCB because it's in the wedding cakes chapter, but she made it during our first free-choice week last February and as a chocoholic I knew I was going to have to bake it sometime.

It's a gimmick cake, really. Make a pan of very fudgey brownies. Cut these up into little cubes. Fold brownie cubes into a chocolate cake batter. Bake (Rose used a specialty pan shaped like a stadium to emphasize the "manly groom" aspect <g>) and serve.

Brownies, maybe just a little underbaked. Younger niece assured me that was fine, as they would bake again in the cake.



Oh look! My cooling rack has made a 1/2" grid on the brownies to give me a cutting guide!



It makes quite a pile of brownies, even after niece steals one. Her verdict: skip the cake, eat the brownies now.



Is that all the batter, and can it possibly cover all the brownie cubes?



Guess it can....



I went with the old-fashioned Bundt pan to minimize the amount of odd crevices I'd have to pack the batter into, and to avoid thinner edges that might scorch. Even so I had a few air pockets on the cake.



Baked up beautifully, but again maybe underbaked. I went with the 190 degree mark given for the brownies and for butter cakes in general, not trusting my ability to pick the "springs back when pressed" moment. But you know, having to scrape some goo off your slicing knife after each cut isn't such a bad thing in a brownie-cake. Maybe I should have gone to a plastic knife like I use for brownies.



Tasting results: No complaints about this one, except for the general "why not just make brownies?" I had hoped to be able to see the brownie chunks in the cake, but they are only perceptable by the moister texture compared to the cake proper. On the other hand, there's really not much cake there anyway, so mostly you do just get brownies.