Sweet Melissa Sundays: Brooklyn Brownout Cake

This week’s Sweet Melissa Sundays recipe is the Brooklyn Brownout Cake and was chosen by Elyse of Confectionery Creations! This is a truly decandent recipe: brownie crumbles sandwiched between two layers of chocolate cake which are then topped with chocolate ganache!

There are a number of steps to this recipe but as Melissa, the author of The Sweet Melissa Baking Book, said, they are all pretty simple. Of course, that probably assumes you’re not a huge procrastinator like me! I could have made the brownies in advance so I’d have had one less thing to do, but, you guessed it, I didn’t. (I made the brownies from the book but I’ll save that post for when the recipe is selected. For now, suffice it to say – YUM! Possibly my favorite brownie recipe ever.)

I finished the brownies last night and made the cake this morning. I used 8-inch cake pans instead of the 7-inch pans called for the in recipe so my cake layers were a bit short. The ganache comes together easily and was so wonderfully shiny! I also thought it was easy to work with and made frosting this cake fun (and I typically am not a fan of frosting layer cakes). I decided not to use the extra brownie crumbles on top of my cake because they weren’t all that visually appetizing. However, I thought the top of the cake needed something. First thing that came to mind was peanut butter chips (chocolate and peanut butter can’t go wrong) but when I checked the pantry I didn’t have any. I went with white chocolate chips instead just to add some visual interest and liked the effect!

After all the work to put this cake together I simply had to try some. OH MY GOODNESS! This is amazing! It’s incredibly rich and moist and chocolaty! The brownie crumbles between the layers aren’t really apparent in the photos but I could definitely taste them. They add a nice textural contrast to the cake. Because the cake is so rich I don’t feel tempted to eat too much of it so it’s actually the best possible kind of treat to keep around 🙂 I would definitely recommend keeping a glass of milk nearby with this one.

A huge thanks to Elyse for this week’s selection! She’ll have the recipe on her blog if you want to give it a try. So far so good with the recipes our group has tried from this wonderful book!