Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Devil’s Food Party Cake

September 23, 2025 at 4:18 pm | Posted in BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 4 Comments
Tags: baking, cake

Sure, this Devil’s Food Party Cake would be great for a birthday, but if it’s just a regular Tuesday, the cake is the party. I love a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting…on my dessert top five, for sure. Both the cake and the frosting here are made with cocoa powder instead of melted chocolate, which Dorie says makes everything profoundly chocolatey. That’s all I need to know to start snipping up a stack of parchment rounds.

I cut the 8-inch cake recipe in half to make a 6-incher, my regular move when I’m just slicing for the two of us. I divided the batter between three pans instead of two, for slightly thinner layers without having to split them in half (which stresses me out, tbh). Because even a small cake lasts several days for us, I brushed the layers with coffee liqueur as I stacked them with the tasty American-style cocoa buttercream. This bit of brushed on liquid helps keep cake from drying out as it sits.

Some TWDers said their cakes came out dense and fudgy. I wouldn’t say that about mine, as it was soft, but it did have what I’d call a tight texture that made barely any crumbs when cut. Maybe slicing the layers in half wouldn’t’t have been too painful after all. I decorated my cake with some giant malt balls I had in the cupboard. This was a just the thing to make the week feel like a celebration!

If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan yet, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays! Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!

4 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Those giant malt balls really make the cake!

Comment by Judy— September 26, 2025 #

Reply
That is a celebration cake if I ever saw one!! I want a piece of that one haha! So beautiful.

Comment by isthisakeeper— September 26, 2025 #

Reply
Your pictures are always flawless. We loved this one, oh that frosting.

Comment by Diane— September 28, 2025 #

Reply
Your cake is decorated to perfection. I enjoyed this cake a lot. Thanks for the tip about using syrup to keep the cake moist – cakes last ages at my place unless I take them to work.

Comment by Cakelaw— October 4, 2025 #

Reply

a whisk and a spoon