Warning: Causes Blackouts

Now that you know, are you ready for all this chocolate?  Be advised, it’s relentless.  Start with a velvety chocolate cake, fully as rich and moist as is any devil’s food cake you’ve tried.  Top that with a creamy chocolate pudding, cooked on the stovetop, then chilled to concentrate its cocoa goodness.

Mercy?  Not likely; we’re only getting started.  On top of that, we add chocolate sprinkles, and crown it all with crumbs of that very same chocolate cake.  Chocolate, four different ways, leaving room for nothing else.  It’s all chocolate, through and through.  Told you it’s relentless.  Doesn’t seem like such a good idea any more, does it?

It does?  Still?  Knowing what you do now?  Then you’re in the company of hundreds of thousands of Brooklynites, among many others, who bought every Blackout Chocolate Cake they could from Ebinger’s Bakery from the time the establishment invented the treat, until the bakery closed in the 1970s.

The cake’s unending waves of chocolate variation inspired its name, as the specialty is visually evocative of a night without power.  Decades later, the creation still dominates the city’s culinary memory, hence the recipe’s inclusion in the modern-day Cook’s Country Cookbook.  This week brings Blackout Cake front and center again, though with slight modifications required for cupcakes.  That’s the format most conducive to the sharing, etc. that motivates many of these efforts.

Among the many versions of chocolate that contribute to the cupcakes’ sublimity is a silky chocolate pudding made from scratch and topping the dessert as would a frosting:

Never before has one of the desserts sampled here been so devoted to one ingredient. and when it came to be, it had to be chocolate.  Of course, complexity animates the seeming uniformity, as described earlier.  Every cupcake celebrates various aspects of the chocolatier’s art, every bite brings intensifying waves of contentment.  Are you ready?  Fine, then prepare the sensory grid to be overwhelmed.

*****

Brooklyn Chocolate Blackout Cake

For the pudding:

• 1 and 1/4 cups granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups half-and-half
• 1 cup milk
• 6 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the cake:

• 1 and 1/2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder (*1)
• 1 cup brewed coffee (*2)
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
•  1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• chocolate sprinkles, for garnish (optional)

Make the pudding first.  In a large saucepan, whisk together the sugar, cornstarch, salt, half-and-half and milk.  Set over a medium flame.  Whisk in the chocolate and continue whisking constantly until the chocolate melts and the pudding thickens and begins to bubble, about three minutes.  Whisk in the vanilla and transfer the pudding to a large bowl.  Place plastic wrap directly on the pudding’s surface to prevent a skin from forming, then refrigerate for at least four hours, up to overnight.

Next, proceed with the cupcakes.  Set the oven rack to the middle position, then preheat the oven to 325°.  Place cupcake liners in two 12-capacity tins.

In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Place a large saucepan over a medium flame and melt the butter in it.  Stir in the cocoa and cook until fragrant, about a minute.  Off heat, whisk in the coffee, buttermilk, brown sugar and granulated sugar until dissolved.  Whisk in the vanilla and the eggs, then slowly whisk in the flour mixture.

Fill each cupcake liner 3/4 of the way with batter.  Cook for 30 minutes, then let cool on a rack for 15 minutes.  Transfer individual cupcakes to the rack to finish cooling, about 30 minutes more.

When cupcakes have cooled, select the three least “aesthetic” cupcakes of the batch (*3) and set them aside for later use.  Retrieve the pudding from the refrigerator.  Using a large spoon, or a pastry bag fitted with a wide tip if you want to be fancy, place a tablespoon or so of pudding atop each of the remaining 21 cupcakes.

Add sprinkles, if using, to each.  Take the three cupcakes you set aside earlier, remove them from the liners, then break them into generous-sized crumbs. Top each of the cupcakes with some of the crumbs (*4) and serve.

NOTES:

1 – Naturally, the better the cocoa powder, the better the result.  In my experience, Barry Callebaut is as good as it gets.

2 – “What am I going to do with fifty subscriptions to Ebony?” (Office Space quote.)  Likewise, what am I going to do with a cup of coffee?  Instead, use a tablespoon of espresso powder, and one cup of lukewarm water.

3 – That’s natural selection, kid.  Survival of the fittest.

4 – Bet you thought something bad was going to happen to the three cupcakes we set aside.  Instead, they ended up with the highest honors, toping the other cupcakes.  From worst to first.