“Dirt” Cake
An American childhood classic reimagined
Hey my dudes!
A couple weeks ago I turned 33 and, as I do every year, I threw myself a party. I love birthdays because I love celebrating with my friends. Nothing brings me more joy than partying with fun people and eating cake and birthdays really do combine those two in the most perfect way.
So every year I have a birthday party because I don’t care how old I am. I want to see my friends, party hardy and have a slice of cake!
For the past few years I have had the same theme for all my birthday parties: Spring!
It’s just so easy. My birthday is in March and at that time of year it feels like it’s the only thing everyone is talking about in Stockholm. The snow is melting! Green things are sprouting! There was a glimmer of sun for 15 whole minutes!
This year, while planning the menu for the party, I was struck with a dilemma. I love love LOVE carrot cake. It’s my favorite cake! Except…I also am passionately in love with chocolate. If forced to FMK carrot, chocolate and literally any other type of cake I would kill everything else, become a polygamist and marry both carrot and chocolate. So I thought to myself why don’t I do just that? Marry chocolate and carrot and create a wonderful baby called Cocoa Carrot Cake?
Now here is where I get real truthful with y’all. I did not come up with this cocoa carrot concept. Way back in 2014 I worked at a bakery in San Francisco called Craftsman and Wolves and they had a cocoa carrot muffin on the menu. It was so good. I was obsessed.
With cocoa carrot as the base flavor I started thinking about what else would be good in there.
Brown butter SMBC is just the best smbc of all time AND it goes perfect with both carrot and chocolate cake so we gotta have that…
Hmm…carrots in cocoa… kinda like being in the ground…springtime…florals…so groundbreaking…brown butter can kinda look a bit like dirt…the cocoa carrot muffin had a cocoa crumble on top…kinda like, well, also dirt…
OH MY GOD I SHOULD MAKE A DIRT CAKE!
And thusly did the whole vision spring forth unto my consciousness. A Dirt Cake! With cookie crumble and fresh edible flowers and of course, of course, homemade gummy worms!! Just like those dirt cups we ate as kids!!
A dirt cup, for the uninitiated, is a cup of chocolate pudding topped with crushed oreos and gummy worms. It’s simple, it’s fun, it’s delicious.
This cake is, admittedly, far from simple. But it was just so fun you guys. Below is the recipe for paid subscribers and I pinky promise it’s actually easier to make homemade gummy worms than you think.
Xoxo,
Cecilia
