8-Layer Chocolate Cake

Leanne E. Smith

The women in my family have all been accomplished cooks and bakers. My mom can cook or bake any type of food. Among many other dishes, her mother made an extremely complicated Japanese fruitcake--a kind that's actually edible, not worthy of being the butt of holiday-season jokes. And her mother, my mom's Grandmother Albritton, made tea cakes without a recipe, just by measuring ingredients in her hand.

My mom's Aunts Mary Lou and Vara (my grandfather's sisters) made famous sweet potato casserole, pecan pie, and dense pound cake, and created a rice dressing with egg in it. Scratch-made cornmeal dressing and chicken-n-pastry are almost always on the table for Thanksgiving at my great Aunt Jean's house in Mt. Olive. And her friends call in cheese straw orders for the next bridge club meeting.

The 8-layer chocolate cake recipe is a relatively new addition to the cooking and baking repertoire my mom and I sort of share. Of course, she is more accomplished than I am, but I can help with this one.

Our first taste of the cake was at a church lunch in Greenville. It was the potluck dinner-on-the-grounds Baptist churches are known for: there were lines of tables with entrees and side dishes, more tables with cups of ice waiting for sweet tea, and of course, a few more tables filled with desserts.

That day, amid the horrid box-mix cakes and no-bake pies, there was something real: the scratch-made thin-layered yellow cake with a cooked chocolate icing. Made by an 80-year-old woman, it was the highlight of the dessert table, at least for a pair of chocoholics like my mom and me.

Talking about that cake later, my mom found a family friend who had a recipe. We tried it and loved it. The cake became a birthday standard. It's so rich that the slices have to be small, and with small slices, the cake lasts for my birthday and my mom's since they're just a week apart in June.

For my seventeenth birthday, we stretched the batter to make seventeen layers, but they were so thin that the warm icing seeped through the cake. The result was a scrumptious-but-somewhat-gooey mass of chocolate with an occasional streak of cake in it. Since then, we've reduced the layers to about twelve. We figured that out the year twelve was half my age. Eight layers are fine for people who want slightly thicker layers.

The process for creating one of these cakes is rather involved, and it's easier with more than one person working on it. While my mom makes the cake batter, I trace and cut out the circles of wax paper to go in the bottom of the cake pans so the layers don't stick and so they can be moved more easily from the cooling rack to the top of the cake.

Later, when the layers have cooled and the icing is warm, she stacks the layers while I spread the icing. She drizzles the icing in the center. I let it spread out naturally for a few seconds before turning the lazy Susan and pushing the icing towards the edge with a dull knife. As the layers are added, the icing oozes out and drips down the outside. I catch the drips with the knife and start coating the outside of the cake from the bottom up. When the last layer is in place, there should be enough icing to cover the top and any parts not already sealed in chocolate on the sides.

This cake is too rich for slices to be cut around a center point like for a pie or pizza. It should be cut straight across the middle. Then thin slices should be cut perpendicular to the first. If made in summer months or times of high humidity, the icing can sugar quickly. That means the sugar in the icing will re-crystallize and make the icing gritty. So, unless the entire cake will be eaten within the week, it is best to freeze about half of it. The slices can be thawed later or enjoyed straight from the freezer.

Plain vanilla ice cream is a good complement for the cake. Fresh strawberries are good with it, too. But it's perfect just by itself.