Smith Island Cake Nom Nom Nom

We've been learning about the 50 states for the kids' geography lessons. Along with the lesson comes a recipe typically including the states "official food". Recently (ok like a month ago because I've put off blogging this) we learned about Maryland. The recipe that came along with Maryland was "Smith Island Cake". Beginning in the 1800's Smith Islanders would send these cakes with the men when they went to the Autumn Oyster Harvest. It typically consists of 10 thin layers and frosted with fudge instead of buttercream as the fudge would last longer. Obviously this sounded delish and I like a good baking challenge; ask my sister-in-law Hope, we up and tried baking a checker cake on a whim one night just because we were bored. :) It didn't come out as pretty as this 10 layer cake did, but man it was SOOOOO good; chocolate cake, white cake, raspberry filling and cream cheese frosting........ excuse me while I go wipe away the drool.

Ahem, anyway. 

So, Thursday night before our small group Cheyenne and I worked together on this cake. And by worked together I mean, Cheyenne played in the flour and once she tired of that off she went to play with her friends, leaving her mom to make a 10 LAYER CAKE ALL BY HERSELF, let's not forget all the awhile attending to a wee one! But, have no fear, the cake was a lot easier then I thought it was going to be! Even a novice baker could make this! I promise! The key here are the aluminum cake pans, ya know, the ones you just throw away. This way your not only baking two layers at a time and having to spend all day baking/cooling/cleaning; repeat. You can bake 3-4 pans at a time and have the next ones ready to pop in right away. 

I used this recipe from Bakerella. She used a 12 layer recipe, which is what we made too, but we only put together 10 layers since the actual Smith Island Cake is only 10. Don't worry the other 2 didn't go to waste, but rather were ravaged by hungry neighbor kids in and out of the kitchen while I was assembling the cake. I did also make the chocolate cream cheese buttercream frosting for mine too, but mine wasn't dark chocolate. It definitely looked better with the buttercream frosted on it instead of just the drippy fudge icing. It was a hit at small group! It's very rich so everyone had a sliver of the cake, but it must not be that rich, because someone, I won't mention who, but someone had like 3 pieces of the cake the next day, starting with one for breakfast. So, really it can't be THAT rich right? 

Ok, now go buy disposable cake pans and hop to! Let me know if you make it and how it comes out! I promise it's one of those impressive but easy recipes! ;)

~Susan