A Recipe for Inducing Diabetes

Also known as Blackout Cake.

This version is based on one from a famous Brooklyn bakery.

Step One

Sift your dry ingredients ('cept sugar) into a bowl:
plain flour (450g)
unsweetened cocoa powder (165g)
bicarb soda (2 tsp)
baking powder (1 1/2 tsp)
salt (large dose! you don't want diabetes without hypertension!)

Should look kinda like this:


Step Two

Mix until thick but still grainy:

Sugar (600g caster sugar)
vanilla seeds (from 1 pod)
buttermilk (284ml)
eggs (4 large)

Then beat in the vegetable oil (250ml).

You can use a food processor, but I like using a whisk,

it makes me feel all colonial.

The secret ingredient, I might add, was the 4 eggs which my lovely neighbors gave me from their chickens :) My advice when accepting eggs of dubious (read: cross-cultural French and Italian marriage) origins is to crack into a bowl first to make sure it's all ok in there.

Will look kind of like this:

Check out those real vanilla seeds in there!!

Step Three:

Combine the two bowls of ingredients in the biggest bowl you can find. Until just combined, don't go crazy.

Will look like something that, were it in a giant vat, I might try to take a swim in, only to drown to my glorious, chocolate covered, death.


Pour into 2 butter-greased 25 cm cake tins lined with circles of baking paper. I didn't have 2 cake tins so I used 2 cheesecake tins of differing diameters....

(Hey when the urge to bake a $22 dollar cake arises, I don't back down!)

If you use 2, 25cm tins it should take 40 mins in a 170C oven to cook. Mine were done at 30 minutes and 40, respectively.

Meanwhile, make the filling:

Sugar (300g caster)
Corn flour (4 tbsp)
pinch of salt (again, don't be stingy!)
Vanilla seeds (of 1 pod)
750ml whole milk

As my husband would say:
don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.

I got the real stuff.

And please do: shake well.
Bonus: the leftover milk goes very well with the finished product.

Put all your filling ingredients in a pan (including the milk, but here are shots of before and after the milk)






















Put your vanilla pod in there too. Put it on medium heat, let it boil, NEVER leaving it's side, always wisking. Once it boils, continue to wisk for 2-3 minutes until it has a custard consistency. Turn off heat, remove vanilla pod, then drop this much expensive Lindt chocolate into the pan (200 g, 70% cocoa):


Once the chocolate has melted, tip into a large dish so that it cools quickly. Resist the urge to give up and eat the whole thing. I recommend having a stand-by chocolate custard on hand to eat while you make this cake. It ensures you can make it through successfully, and

preps the pancreas for the sugar intake later.

Once cakes are done, cool completely on wire racks. Then cut each one into 2 (horizontally) to make 4 rounds. It was only with the grace of God that I managed to do this. (And the recipe helped too, these cakes are much more substantial than any other I've made.) Spread the filing in between each layer and again on top.

"That's the best cake I've ever tasted." - The Hubs

And for the more astute of you, with 900g of pure sugar, it damn well should be!

It has no butter though, so it's pretty healthy, right?