For the layer cake week, I made a small devil’s food cake. This cake was fantastic, but I did struggle a bit this week. The cake portion was incredibly easy to make even after scaling it down, and it was also quite delicious. After being unsuccessful with the original frosting paired with the cake recipe as well as a second, I eventually settled on this super basic chocolate frosting from King Arthur Flour to get it frosted. The frosting is a bit sweeter than I prefer, but it was super easy to throw together after my earlier fails.

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One-Bowl Devil’s Food Layer Cake

Recipe from BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts by Stella Parks
Makes one 8-by-4-inch three-layer cake; 16 servings

Ingredients

• 3 sticks | 12 ounces unsalted butter
  
• 1½ cups | 12 ounces black coffee, or black tea such as Assam
  
• 1 cup | 3 ounces Dutch-process cocoa powder, such as Cacao Barry Extra Brute
  
• 1¼ cups | 6 ounces finely chopped dark chocolate, about 72%
  
• 2 cups gently packed | 16 ounces light brown sugar
  
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  
• 1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt (half as much if iodized)
  
• 6 large eggs, straight from the fridge
  
• 3 tablespoons | 1½ ounces egg yolks (from about 3 large eggs)
  
• 2 cups | 9 ounces all-purpose flour, such as Gold Medal
  
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
  
  

  Directions
  

1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat to 350°F. Line three 8-by-3-inch anodized aluminum cake pans with parchment and grease with pan spray; if you don’t have three pans, the remaining batter can be held at room temperature for up to 90 minutes. (The cakes won’t rise quite as high in 2-inch pans.)
   
2. Combine butter and coffee in a 5-quart stainless steel saucier and set over low heat. Once the butter is melted, remove from heat and whisk in the cocoa and chocolate, followed by the brown sugar, vanilla, and salt. Mix in the eggs and yolks. Sift in the flour (if using a cup measure, spoon into the cup and level with a knife before sifting) and baking soda. Whisk thoroughly to combine, then divide among the prepared cake pans (about 23 ounces each).
   
3. Bake until the cakes are firm, though your finger will leave an impression in the puffy crust, about 30 minutes (or 210°F). A toothpick inserted into the center will emerge with a few crumbs still attached. Cool until no trace of warmth remains, about 90 minutes.
   
4. Loosen the cakes from their pans with a knife, invert onto a wire rack, peel off the parchment, and reinvert. Trim the top crusts from the cakes with a serrated knife (this helps the cakes better absorb moisture from the frosting). Place one layer cut side up on a serving plate. Cover with a cup of the frosting, spreading it into an even layer with the back of a spoon. Repeat with the second and third layers, cut side down. Finish the top and sides of the cake with the remaining frosting, and coat with cookie crumbs, if you like.
   
5. Under a cake dome or an inverted pot, the frosted cake will keep for up to 24 hours at room temperature. After cutting, wrap leftover slices individually and store at room temperature for up to 4 days more.
   
   

   Chocolate Frosting
   

   
   Recipe from King Arthur Flour
   Makes enough for one 8” or 9” two-layer cake
   
   

   Ingredients
   

   
   

• 1¼ cups | 106g natural cocoa powder (sifted if lumpy)
  
• 1 cup + 3 cups | 113g + 340g confectioners' sugar (sifted if lumpy)
  
• ¼ teaspoon salt
  
• ⅓ cup | 74g hot water
  
• 1 tablespoon | 14g vanilla extract
  
• 16 tablespoons (1 cup) | 227g butter, softened
  
  

  Directions
  

1. In a large mixing bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer, stir together - by hand or mixer - the cocoa powder, 1 cup (113g) of the confectioners’ sugar, and the salt. Stir in the water and vanilla, scraping the bowl if necessary.
   
2. Add the butter and remaining confectioners’ sugar, stirring to combine. Using an electric hand mixer or a stand mixer with paddle attachment, beat the frosting at medium-high speed for 1 to 2 minutes, until lightened in color and fluffy, stopping halfway through to scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl. When the frosting is ready, scoop out a bit on your spatula; does it seem nicely spreadable? If it's too stiff, beat in water (1 teaspoon at a time) until it's the consistency you want.

I moved to a new apartment a couple of weeks ago and still haven't finished unpacking the kitchen. Nevertheless, the hazelnut (gluten-free) variation* of Glossy Fudge Brownies from Stella Parks' BraveTart was a wonderful way to christen the oven.

I've made the original version in the past. Both are the best brownies I've ever had.

My coworkers could not stop raving about how moist and decadent they are.

​

*"Replace the all-purpose flour with 7 ounces (1 3/4 cups) hazelnut flour or an equal weight of toasted, skinned hazelnuts pulsed with the cocoa in a food processor until powdery and fine, about 1 minute."

I made Stellas chocolate chip cookies - the brown butter version and used toasted sugar. These might be the best cookies I've ever eaten. 😳

My fam loves these cookies and they were devoured the day that I baked them.

Recipe I used was from her book! I will keep recommending friends to buy this book because I've seen a lot of success with it.

buy her book!

Edit: added link to purchase book (and only just figured out how to hyperlink on mobile 😯)

>But I want to delve a little deeper to learn more and maybe even be able to "freestyle" in the future.

I'd say the very first thing you need to learn is to grasp & adopt the concept of how you really, truly learn cooking. There's a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin that goes, "The most powerful force in the universe is compounding interest." That means that as you do little bits of work on a consistent basis, it adds up to create fluency & accomplishment. Same idea as high school...you show up every day for 4 years & suddenly you have a diploma! If you can buy into that idea, then that will serve as the 'guiding light' for how you approach cooking, i.e. as steady, consistent progress against individual recipes, techniques, and flavor combinations, rather than random shotgun blasts scattered here & there.

In cooking, you can't do all of the processes & understand all of the flavor combinations unless you've studied them & actually done them, hands-on, in-person, and that is a long-term process. Until then, you're just window shopping, you know? I have a few posts here on kind of the basics of cooking that is worth reading through:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cookingforbeginners/comments/ajrsio/what_basicgeneral_cooking_tips_and_advice_do_you_think_everybody_should_kno/eeyhpua/?context=3

And in order to do learn those processes & understand the flavor combinations & build up a personal recipe database, you need to cook - a lot! If you're really serious about it, then I would recommend cooking every single day. Not necessarily every single meal, but cook at least one thing a day. In order to do that, you need to do some meal planning, which involves picking out what to cook, going shopping, and planning out what to make & when. I have a few posts on that here as well:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mealprep/comments/afdqju/meal_prep_ideas/edyhgbu/

Here is what I would recommend:

1. Commit to a plan. I'd suggest cooking just one thing a day. It can be separate from your actual meals, if you'd like, which is how I do it - I cook one meal a day for freezer storage when I get home from work every day. And because my kitchen is organized, I've made a meal-plan for the week, I've gone shopping, I've picked what day I'm going to cook each recipe, I've created a reminder alarm on my phone, and I have the recipe...I mean, it pretty much just boils down to actually doing the work, you know? Which is pretty dang easy, because at this point of preparation, it's like shooting fish in a barrel...I know what to make, how to make it, I have all the ingredients, and I'm only doing just one single solitary little recipe at a time, just one per day.
   
2. "Cook the book" - buy one cookbook & work your way through it. Personally, I'd recommend starting off with Kenji's Food Lab book. He has great pre-vetted recipes & explains them thoroughly. If you prefer baking, then check out Stella's Bravetart book, which takes a similar approach.
   
3. Create a recipe storage locker & a notes locker. I'd recommend Evernote or OneNote. They let you search, tag, and create individual notes, so you can organize things by ingredient, cooking style, and so on. All of the raw ingredients in the world already exist. All of the known recipes that are documented are already written down. There's a tremendous amount of knowledge & resources out there in terms of flavor combinations, tools, and ingredients available at your disposable...but your database is pretty empty right now. The rest of the world doesn't matter...what matters is filling up your personal database so that you can cook & bake & create delicious things for yourself, your family, and your friends. Your job is to build up that knowledge recipe by recipe, technique by technique, ingredient by ingredient. You've tried paprika, but have you tried smoked paprika? You've tried cinnamon, but have you tried roasted cinnamon? Have you used a microplane on a cinnamon stick or a whole nutmeg? You may have used garlic powder or chopped up a clove of garlic before, but have to roasted it to the point where it spreads like butter? Have you fermented black garlic in a rice cooker? That's not stuff you learn all at once, instantly, overnight, and become a pro at...you have to learn the flavors, and the process, and experiment, and see what works & what doesn't, and equally importantly, you need to write that down, because you WILL forget, but having your notes allows you to get inspired & think up great combinations & try new things & fall back on old ones.
   
   I mean, basically that's it - create a plan that involves doing a little bit of work on a regular basis, commit to it, and create some processes & reminders that enable you to easily slip into cooking mode when you want to. It's nothing more than a simple checklist, and you can be all over the map with it - learn how to cook marshmallows, and chicken tikka masala, and how to make your own jello, and what crystals are in chocolateering & how to temper your own chocolate using sous-vide, and how to cook using an electric pressure cooker, and what a good basic kitchen toolset looks like. Imagine if you only learn one thing a day or cook one thing a day...in a year, you'll have 365 new tidbits of knowledge under your belt; in five years, you'll have nearly two thousand bits of information under your belt.
   
   Please feel free to ask questions! To me, cooking isn't about going hardcore every day by cooking lots of stuff for hours & hours, it's about specifically focusing on one individual thing at a time & mastering it so that you "own" that knowledge, you know?
   
   For example, I went through a marshmallow phase. I went to a dessert shop a few winters ago & they had this amazing ultra-premium hot chocolate that was just out of this world, then they topped it off with a giant 2" hand-made marshmallow that they skewered & finished with a torch. It was sooooo good that I HAD to learn how to make it! As it turns out, like with anything else, you can deep-dive into just those two topics alone - hot chocolate & marshmallows. Here's some good introductory reading from one of my favorite hot chocolate shops in NYC, "City Bakery": (I'm pretty sure they just melt a chocolate bar into a cup, haha!)
   
   https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-4172562/Make-best-hot-chocolate-City-Bakery.html
   
   Four of my favorite NY chefs (Dominque Ansel, Jacques Torres, Maury Rubin, and Michael Klug) have some very different opinions on it:
   
   https://food52.com/blog/15460-how-to-make-the-best-hot-chocolate-according-to-the-experts
   
   part 1/2

Stella Parks new book for pastry. I haven't read it but if it anything like her serious eats articles it will be what you are looking for. For that matter, Kenji's "The Food Lab" is an excellent resource for savory food. It puts the why and how right out front.

The FAQ on the side bar has a ton of suggestions. Some may be from older posts but worth checking out.