A Dog Defeated

A week ago Gourmet made me guffaw: the magazine proclaimed that a certain Devil Dog Cake, while as easy to make as a pan of brownies, could gratify every desire that brownies could not. This I found hard to believe. I baked the Devil Dog Cake, following the recipe to the letter, so that I might judge for myself the cake's caliber.

As promised, the Devil Dog Cake was a cinch to prepare. I had only one hang-up: the direction to add water to the cake batter flew in the face of my bakerly instincts. The liquids I usually add to batters threaten to halt one's heart upon overconsumption: melted butter, oils, milks, and creams. But I remained faithful to Gourmet's recipe and hosed down the batter. Truth be told, I hoped this whole ordeal would end in failure. To this end, the airy, mousse-like batter was not a good sign.

The Devil Dog Cake puffed up proudly in the oven, its ego no doubt swollen by Gourmet's fawning. I let it rest for a few hours and then attempted the marshmallow frosting; the pathetic outcome of that endeavor is made obvious in these photos. Fortunately the frosting mattered little in the case of Devil Dog Cake v. Brownie.

My first bite: the cake dissolved into a thousand feathery crumbs the instant it touched my tongue. Then, curiously, the little crumbs clumped back together and formed a buttery wad of cake that was so dense as to be nearly suffocating. There was a chocolate flavor, sure, but I did not taste chocolate. A tinny, bittersweet sapor was all that suggested cocoa content. This struck me as familiar, and now I realize why.

No chocolate cake is chocolatey enough to cure a craving.

Reflect upon your last - or even your best - experience with chocolate cake. Stripped of its icing and other accouterments, could it have satisfied an intense desire for chocolate? Or was the texture a tad too lightweight, its flavor a bit on the bland side? To me, a chocolate cake is only as good as the buttercreams slathered on it. Yet a brownie is a ganache-turned-gâteau, a forkable frosting, a candy bar made cakey. Brownies require just enough eggs, flour, butter, sugar, and talent to properly showcase good chocolate; cakes require just enough chocolate to showcase good eggs, flour, butter, sugar and talent.

This court rules in favor of the defendant.