Oogie Boogie Double Chocolate Dirt Cake

Lucas requested this cake for his special meal, and it turned out to be a huge, tall heavy cake, but wasn't super moist. I am going to document some things here to help make it more moist the next time, but it was still really good, the frosting was excellent, and it would be totally worth it to make this cake again for Halloween or to feed a crowd. The chocolate frosting, chocolate sprinkles, chocolate-filled Oreos and gummy worms make it absolutely revolting to look at, but delicious to taste.

Oogie Boogie Double Chocolate Dirt Cake

Ingredients:

For the Chocolate Mocha Cake:

• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 cup strong brewed coffee
• 6 oz dark chocolate, chopped
• 2/3 cup cocoa powder
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 stick butter at cool room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla

For the Chocolate Frosting:

• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 6 Tbl butter at cool room temperature
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• pinch of salt

For the Toppings:

• 1 1/2 cups crushed Oreos (chocolate filled, or white filling removed)
• chocolate sprinkles
• 12 gummy worms (or so)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray at 9x13 pan with nonstick spray. In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside.
2. In a microwave safe bowl, combine coffee and chocolate. Mix until smooth. If coffee is not hot enough, microwave in 15-30 second intervals until you can combine the coffee and chocolate until smooth. Sift your cocoa powder into the coffee mixture and whisk together. Add the buttermilk and whisk again. Set aside to cool.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a beater attachment, beat butter, brown sugar, oil, and salt on medium speed until creamy, about 1 minute. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition until just combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Beat in vanilla, then add the chocolate mixture and beat until combined. Add the flour mixture and fold in until just combined or even leaving a few small streaks of flour in the batter which will get combined in as you pour the batter and spread it out into your baking dish. 
4. Once your batter is poured evenly into your baking dish, bake for about 45 minutes, or until a skewer inserted near the center comes out clean. Let cool completely before frosting and decorating.

To Make the Frosting:

1. Into the clean bowl of the stand mixer, sift together powdered sugar and cocoa powder. Add butter and mix on low until mixture is crumbly. Beat in milk, vanilla and salt on medium-high speed until smooth and fluffy. Scrape down sides of the bowl and mix again.
2. Spread frosting over the cake, sprinkle with cookies crumbs, sprinkles (if desired), and gummy worms.

Marsha's Notes:

Can you see how dry this cake looks?

It was delicious, but dry. So I read on the Internet where you can sub butter in a recipe for oil and get moister results, so in the future I can try to sub out that stick of butter and instead use 1/2 cup oil (in addition to the oil already in the recipe).

It is also highly recommended that you don't overmix or overbake your cake (which I don't think I did...) and to use room temperature ingredients (which I did), so those are good tips but won't help me with this recipe.

Other suggestions are to add some sour cream (maybe start with 1/2 cup), an extra egg, and some of a pudding mix (or all of a mix, if you feel adventurous). If I try these, I will return and report. I put this in bold so I am more likely to remember to add these to my ingredients when shopping.

It is also suggested that you pour your batter into a larger pan so you can bake your cake faster and then might lose less moisture in the baking process, so I might try pour this cake batter into my largest baking pan (more like a 15x11) the next time.

Last recommendation is to bake at a lower temperature, which would take longer but I guess is more gentle on the cake and the moisture.