ONE Year Blog Giveaway! And TWD-Devil's Food White Out Cake

It's been one year today since my first blog post.  Wow.  I can't believe it's been a year since I started this.  I really just wanted to start keeping track of things going on with us and the boys and thought it would be fun to start including recipes of things I love.  Now, I'm having so much fun baking up a storm, trying new recipes and sharing them with family, friends and many people I've never met, but feel like we know each other.  How fun! 

On that note, I think only the best thing to do to thank everyone for taking time to read my blog and gawk at all my recipes AND my cute boys is with a giveaway!  So here it is--my parents gave us one of these for Christmas and I love it.  I use it all the time.  It's the Vidalia Chop Wizard!

Now if you know me, you know I DO NOT like onions.  I never buy them and NEVER cook with them, but this thing is great for chopping all kinds of fruits and vegetables.  It really is a time saver and so much easier than chopping with a knife (I often cut myself when I have a knife!).  So here's one waiting for the lucky randomly drawn winner.  What else do I love?  Well, this, of course---CHOCOLATE!  Have to throw a little of this in, too!

Leave me a comment telling me what your favorite chocolate is (brand, flavor, whatever) as well as your favorite way to enjoy it (in a cookie, cake, by itself, etc.) and/or GASP, if you don't like chocolate, what you do like in place of chocolate as an indulgence.  One lucky winner will be chosen Wednesday evening (deadline is 9 p.m. CST).  Thanks for a great fun year of blogging, can't wait to see what deliciousness this next year brings.  Starting with this amazing cake--------------

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TWD--Devil's Food White Out Cake

This week's recipe from Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home to Yours was chosen by Stephanie of Confessions of a City Eater and doggonit, it's about time someone chose the great looking cake that's on the cover of this book--Devil's Food White Out Cake!  Great pick, Stephanie.  You can get the recipe posted on her blog.  This cake was fun to make, and challenging and pretty darn yummy (although I only took a couple bites!).

A friend of ours, Bob, had a birthday recently and he saw this cake on the book  cover and told me that was what he wanted.  He told me this when I had just found out it was chosen this month for one of our TWD baking adventures.  Perfect.  I love having a reason to bake!  The recipe calls for 8 inch pans, which I totally thought I had, but it turned out my pans were 9 inch.  I didn't want to have cakes that were too thin, since they did have to be sliced in half, so I decided to one and a half times the recipe.  Glad I did, although I do not enjoy math with fractions!  I put 1 and a 1/2 pounds of batter in each 9 inch pan as well as 9 oz. of batter in a 6 inch pan (frozen, to be used later!)   I will leave out a few small setbacks that were easily fixable while I made the cake and just say that I think it turned out really well.  The most trying part of it was making the filling/frosting which included waiting for the sugar syrup to come to temperature on the stove and not over whipping the egg whites in the meantime.  Dorie didn't really give suggested times on this, which I think would have helped, but it did all work out in the end.  It took 15-20 minutes for the sugar to come to 242 degrees, so don't start beating the egg whites too soon, those only take a few minutes!   That's all I have to say about that.  The cake came together really well.

I like that it didn't really matter how the frosting looked because the cake was then going to be covered-in cake!

I chose not to have too much cake overkill, so I put mini chocolate chips on the top.

Wanna a piece?  This cake was nice if you don't love a butter cream icing, it doesn't leave you with that  stuffed feeling of sugar "ugghhh".  Know what I mean?  Bob took most of it home, good thing, I woulda kept eating it.  I only took a few bites of one of the boy's pieces. 

Don't forget to leave a comment and enter for a chance at winning my giveaway!  You have until Wed. night, the 18th at 9 p.m.