The Cake Merchant

Have I mentioned how much I love my Bouchon Bakery cookbook? I got it for my birthday back in February, and even though I’ve spent hours staring at the lovely photographs (it’s my new coffee table book), I’ve hardly made any of the recipes. I’ve been dying to try the devil’s food cake, since it’s one of my very favorite desserts ever, so I was really excited to try Thomas Keller’s version. You might remember the devil’s food cake I made for my birthday this year, which I absolutely loved, so I wanted to see how this would compare.

The recipe differs quite a bit from the Baking Illustrated version. There’s no melted chocolate, and mayonnaise is used instead of milk or sour cream. I know what you’re thinking. Mayonnaise? In a fancy French cookbook? I thought the same thing. Chocolate mayonnaise cake was popular in during World War 2, when certain ingredients were in short supply and people had to get creative. If you think about it, it makes sense. Mayo is made of egg, oil, and vinegar, which are all common ingredients in cakes anyway.

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I have 3 words for you- peanut butter oreos. These were totally an impulse buy at the grocery store, but since peanut butter and chocolate is the best combination on earth, I knew they were going to be amazing. How did I just now discover these?

Remember these cupcakes I made around Christmas time? These use the same (vegan) chocolate cupcake recipe. In fact, the entire cupcake is vegan. Instead of Oreo’s, I used Newman O’s this time, which is a slightly healthier version of the cookie. Don’t get me wrong, this is by no means health food. Newman O’s still contain a lot of sugar, but it’s organic sugar instead of HFCS. Hey, I’ll take what I can get. They’re also egg and dairy free, so no animals were harmed in the making of these cupcakes.

The cupcake recipe is from one of my go to baking books, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I love this chocolate cupcake recipe. It’s so simple, and you don’t even need a mixer! Just whisk together the ingredients, and you have a perfect one bowl chocolate cupcake. If you don’t have non-dairy milk on hand and you’re not concerned about the cupcakes being vegan, just sub regular milk (I’ve made it with skim, 2%, and whole). This recipe works well with both natural and Dutch process cocoa powder.

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