The cake looks fabulous! I've been using a LOT of recipes from this book, LOVE it!

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We celebrated my husband's birthday last weekend and, as you can plainly see, I made a very tall buttercream-frosted cake for the occasion. I wanted to make it just as he'd requested--a devil's food cake that would satisfy his childhood memories of what a birthday cake is supposed to be. Three layers high, with the classic, simple, American-style buttercream . . . rich, sweet, and completely chocolatey. No extraneous frills allowed. No foil-covered cake board or lacy doily. No fancy frosting decorations all over the place. Not even any lettering, and thus no "Happy Birthday Andy!!" written in icing on the top. I had to kind of twist his birthday-boy arm, in fact, for clearance to put even a few hastily piped dots around the messy bottom edge; they were legitimately needed to cover up the inevitable smudges.

Because of the clear requirement for a certain level of simplicity, I figured I should also forego the fussy niceties that frequently accompany the assembly of a layer cake like this. Niceties like what, you ask? Well, like piping on an icing "dam" around the outer edge of each layer before spreading the rest of the icing on each one; this is a very useful tactic, even if the whole cake is being frosted inside and out with a single type of icing, and I usually utilize it. But not for this cake, no sir. And, I opted out of the nicety of putting a "crumb coat" (a thin, initial icing layer intended primarily to seal in crumbs) on the cake before laying on the final icing layer. I never go without the crumb coat. Never. But this time I forced myself to just not do it.

"It's all one big frosting layer, baby, and you'd better like it!" That's what I was thinking as I plopped on glob after glob of buttercream icing, helter-skelter as if I had a plane to catch. My youngest son, Nathan, helped with the frosting too (perhaps he needed to catch the same plane?). Those are his hands in the photo below, holding that little offset spatula. (He's still a bit reticent at the prospect of appearing on camera. I guess his hands aren't shy, though, luckily.)

Once the cake was safely sealed within its hefty buttercream carapace, I rebelled just a smidgen by putting it on a cake pedestal with a ruffly edge. Looking at the cake from a few feet back, Nathan remarked that it resembled a bizarre top-hat of sorts. True, I responded, but a really good smelling top-hat.

As far as the recipe goes, I was pleased to finally have an opportunity to try out a book I've been reading lately called Sky High: Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes, by Alisa Huntsman and Peter Wynne. This is the first cookbook I've ever encountered that focuses exclusively on cakes that are three layers. On the surface, it may seem like an overly specific concept for a cookbook, and it is unique in the vast field of baking books that I've encountered. But I must say it's convenient, if not downright comforting, to have the exact proportions for a cake of that size already figured out for you. And, it's nice to know that the cake you're constructing was designed from the get-go to be sturdy enough to hold up without problems. Afterall, the last person you want to have to call in the middle of a banking crisis is a structural engineer. (Sadly, unlike our dear friends the plumbers and furnace repair guys, they're not on call to the general public 24 hours a day.)

Because I'd never used this recipe before, I changed nothing at all in terms of the ingredients, nor did I mess with the process for putting it together. Yeah, I know, it's shocking. ( "How the heck did she restrain herself?" you may be wondering . . . "maybe she had to take a tranquilizer first . . . ?") But seriously folks, I'm glad I didn't fiddle with it since the finished cake's texture and depth of flavor were all I could have hoped for and more. Truly an exceptional devil's food that's highly likely to end up on my permanent list of reliable favorites. And not only that, there must be at least a dozen more recipes in this book that I already know I'd like to try. They all sound so interesting and look so good--lots of luscious photos, too, to back up the author's claims. It's worth shelling out a few bucks for this book, bakers. (And you know I don't make a purchase recommendation lightly.)

The recipe for the chocolate buttercream is, as I noted earlier, very American and traditional. That said, it's not one that I'd describe as stupefyingly sweet and it has no trace of the grittiness that sometimes afflicts this type of frosting. It's a soft, deeply chocolatey, easily spreadable buttercream, and the recipe is rock-solid reliable. It's from an older book that I think I've mentioned before, quaintly titled The Magical Art of Cake Decorating. I've made this icing several times in the past, and never had the slightest problem with it.

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