I don't normally gravitate toward a big chocolate-y dessert, BUT Oreos are perhaps the best cookie ever and that's what got me - that nicely speckled crushed cookie filling... when I was younger and not lactose-impaired and could drink a big glass of milk without later complications, milk and oreos... I think perhaps a whole box of oreos to one glass of milk was about right. I'd soak them until the cookie was almost mushy, but then the filling consistency was still the same...in the words of George Takei: "oohh Myyyyy". Make this I must!
[Note: Can I tell you that I have literally been writing this for weeks... shortly after Easter until... well now it's May 15th. Geez. I apologize for being the most sucktastic blogger ever. Back to the cake.]
There is of course, the actual recipe for the chocolate cake for this. Being pressed for time (and lazy), I used a Duncan Hines Devil's Food boxed mix. Why the heck is that called "Devil's Food"? I have to find out. Apparently, according to Wikipedia therefore it must be accurate, the cake is called so because it is the opposite of Angel Food cake. Alright, sounds plausible enough. I made my cake as 2 8" layers, wrapped it, and put it in the deep freeze.
When I got close to ready to assemble is when I actually made the filling, because I wanted to keep it as fresh as possible, and it's made with whipped cream and I didn't want the consistency to be affected if it sat. I crushed the bejesus out of my cookies. I wanted the cookie crumbs to be as fine as possible, so I did them in the food processor. I also bought the cheapest cookies known to mankind. It's an ingredient in a cake, and kind of minor in comparison with what is to be a lot of chocolate flavor - there's no need to buy the most expensive cookies out there. I would not change a single ingredient in the filling. It's perfect - so very light in flavor and texture and yet substantial enough to use as a filling in a multi-layered cake, and makes a great counterpoint to all the rich chocolate. A word about assembling: since I did not make the chocolate cake as written in the recipe itself, I do not know what the density of that cake would be, but the boxed Devil's Food was so light and moist that it actually didn't freeze as well as I thought. What do I mean by that? I mean that the cake was very cold but still very fluffy and soft. This did not cause me a big problem, and I was able to cut each round into two layers, and still filled easily.
For the frosting, I opted to do a ganache. What is described in the recipe is a buttercream, but I find buttercream to be such a pain in the arse. Ganache can take on a couple different forms. It's very simple - almost equal amounts of chocolate and heavy cream. Put your chocolate in a bowl, heat up the cream, pour on top of the chocolate, and let the chocolate melt, stir it so it all comes together, and voila a nice velvety liquid chocolate sauce. Let it cool and it starts to get thicker. When its very very cool, you can continue to a whip it up and make more of a frosting consistency, but I decided I wanted to just pour the cooled ganache over the top of the cake and I did pick up what fell to the bottom, I used a small spatula (a.k.a. butter knife) and made sure the sides were covered also. And that's it! Done!
Verdict: Deeeelicousness. Everyone loved it and come to think of it, on a difficulty scale the most difficult part was assembly and it was not bad at all. I used boxed cake and it was fine. Changing to ganache - perfectly easy. What's the hardest part? Washing everything. Totally worth making and I wouldn't change anything from what I did, except maybe try the cake (itself) recipe.
So my apologies for this being the longest awaited recipe review yet, even though technically you, dear reader, have no concept of how much time has actually elapsed from start to finish (but it's a lot).
'Til we meet again....
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