American Chocolate Layer Cake: Part One

Maida describes this cake as "the most stupendous of all chocolate layer cakes. . . . enough for a very large party or a small army." Well gosh, I don't have any large parties planned, and certainly don't have a small army to feed. But I can't wait to finish this cake. This is a project. And since I'm doing it during the week -- the week filled with work and taking Natalie to the driving range -- I've gotta make this cake in parts.

So last night I made the cake layers themselves. There are FOUR cake layers. I only had two pans -- so I had to run to Michael's to pick up more pans. To take the cake layers out of the pans, I needed 5 racks. I only have 2. Next purchase -- 3 more cake racks. These four layers have one stick of butter a piece -- you do the math. My poor stand mixer could barely get through the mass of butter . . . I mean batter . . . in the bowl. Per Maida's option, I threw walnuts into half of the batter, so that when the cake is done, the nut-filled layers will alternate with the buttery-plain layers.

The beautiful cake layers are now sitting patiently on the dining room table waiting for me to frost them. I'm hoping Kitty doesn't get to them. Or Pete -- who offered graciously to finish the cake for me. I couldn't tell whether he meant that he would eat it or frost it. He is, however, going to buy me a cake plate solid enough to handle this monstrosity.