Frankye’s Marshmallow Fudge Cake
February 17th, 2012
Willie is turning 10—double digits. When I asked what cake he wanted to take to his class, he answered as he did last year: that chocolate cake with the marshmallows. My daughter wanted the same when she was small, as did I. My mother preferred to make a pound cake with hard white icing that she could decorate with little pink and pale green rosettes. I put up with that when I was four but when she made it the next year, too, I got under the bed and would not come out for my party. Such is the power of the Marshmallow Fudge Cake.
Marshmallows are not a staple of my pantry, but this weekend we are encountering them twice. After the movie and dinner for Willie’s friends, we’re building a bonfire in the meadow for the making of S’mores.
The cake is dense, similar to brownies, even though egg whites are beaten stiff, then folded into the batter. Ed likes to demonstrate when the whites are ready by holding the copper bowl upside down over his head. Recently he did that twice. The sides had slicked enough by the second time that the whites slid out all over him and the floor. Much appreciated by his audience of three!
Marshmallows are studded over the cake.
Then the icing is poured over. It doesn’t have to cover the sides because that’s just too much of a good thing.
Last year, several third- grade classmates asked my daughter for the recipe! Now that is success in the kitchen!
Here’s the recipe. I doubled it this time. Be sure to sift the powdered sugar into a snowy mountain.
Cake:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
1 cup boiling water
½ cup unsweetened cocoa
2 cups flour, sifted
1 teaspoon each baking powder and baking soda
½ cup butter, softened
1 ½ cups sugar
2 eggs, separated
1 teaspoon vanilla
¾ cup milk
Make a paste of the hot water and cocoa. Slightly cool. Sift together the flour, baking powder and baking soda. In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugar then beat in the two yolks. Beat the whites in a copper or metal bowl until stiff. Combine the cocoa mixture and the eggs / sugar and blend well. Add the vanilla. Beat the flour and milk alternately into the batter, then, when well incorporated, fold in the whites.
Pour into a buttered, parchment-lined 9 x 13 (or slightly larger) pan and bake for 15 minutes if you have a convection oven, or 20 minutes in a normal oven. Don’t overbake it! The instant it’s firm, take it out. My mother lined her pans with waxed paper.
The original recipe calls for sour milk. I don’t ever have that on hand, though I could add a little lemon juice to regular milk—that passes for sour milk. I just use whole milk.
Let the cake cool before turning it out. When totally cool, stud the top with marshmallows. I use the fancy kind from Whole Foods but never met anything but the regular ones until recently.
Make the icing and pour it over the marshmallows. Let it cool and harden before covering with plastic wrap.
Icing:
½ cup unsweetened cocoa
½ stick butter, melted
Pinch of salt
½ cup whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
Stir the cocoa into the warm butter until all the little lumps are gone. Add the salt, milk, and vanilla. Add a scoop of powered sugar and blend before adding more scoops. The icing should not be too thick to pour. Add a bit more milk if you need to for the proper consistency.
There it is–Frankye’s immortality, though she’d prefer, I imagine, that I praise her Lane Cake, Caramel Cake, or Coconut Cake instead. But this is chocolate southern decadence!
If there’s an almost ten-year old around to lick the spoon–even better!
So wonderful, the stories, the recipe, the photo play-by-play. Happy birthday to Willie, and many many more, birthdays AND Chocolate Marshmallow Cakes.
Nanci, thanks, I love your Southern Cakes book! I was at your signing at Burwell School. Frances
I can feel my blood sugar rising just looking at that cake! Looks AWESOME!
Is the recipe in the new cookbook?
Oh gosh, it looks absolutly lovely. I don’t think anyone in Sweden (where I live) have thought about that.
Reminds me very much of the favorite my two girls always requested for taking to school and for any other special event they could think of. Rocky Road Bars. As the name implies there are marshmallows in chocolate involved.
Good afternoon,
My goodness, that is SOME cake! And oh MY, Willie will never forget his beloved Eddie and the egg whites story.
And Willie, have a wonderful birthday! 10 years old already! Time flies!!
H*A*P*P*Y B*I*R*T*H*D*A*Y!!!!!!
Barb
Oh my goodness. After reading about this cake I think I want to make it for my 25th birthday next weekend. I made Fudge today for my friends in Scotland. My mother always makes it for Christmas and I at least once tend to under boil it and turn it into a tar like consistency. Through email, my mother reminded me to boil all the way and make sure I don’t poison my friends. hahah. My next attempt will be this cake. Thanks for the recipe.
Thanks so much for posting the recipe! I’m soon making a dessert for a church youth group, and I have a feeling this will be a huge hit!
sounds and loooks delish!! will be making this one as well as several other
cakes you have shared recipes for!! thanks Frances!!!
holy moly but that sounds/looks good!
Y U M M Y !!!! Can I lick the bowl too Frances?
I hope Willie has a wonderful tenth birthday celebration.
Noooo… why did you have to post THIS when I’ve been doing so well on my January resolution diet! It has nearly sent me out the door to my local bakery… cakes and pastries are my downfall. Fortunately I am (only just)made of stronger stuff than marshmallow fudge cake.
I am looking forward to your cookbook, I think I can buy it from Amazon here in the UK, available from April. Do you ever tour the UK? I would definitely come to see you if you did.
PS. tell Ed that egg whites are good for the skin, they act as a nourishing astringent.
Never mind the 10 year old, this 50+ year old would love this for her birthday cake!
That cake looks amazing! You just can’t beat a good ‘ol southern desert! I recently took a big bowl of banana pudding to a dinner party(in my adopted Yankee home in Connecticut) not a drop left and lots of requests for recipes. Which really made me kinda chuckle… does one really need a recipe for layering bananas, vanilla wafers and pouring custard over it!
Happy Happy Birthday to Willie!!!
Dear Frances,
Thank you so much for your books. I was first introduced to you via the movie Under the Tuscan Sun, which while fun as a lighthearted movie, did not begin to capture your words. I am an artist and I listen to books on CD while painting. I wondered just how different your actual book might be. I am so in love with your words! They sift in as I guide my paint across my canvas. After listening to Under the Tuscan Sun and In Tuscany, I am now in the midst of Every Day in Tuscany. You have given words to a desire I didn’t fully know I had. I only sensed this when I was in Italy on my birthday last June. On returning home to the peninsula just below San Francisco, I knew I would return to the Tuscan region. But it was only after listening to your words – like a beacon, that I now know where my true destiny is. Thank you!
Johanna
P.S. I am taking Italian classes so when I return I came have actual conversation in the land where people actually love to talk! Thanks again.
Okay…perhaps I shouldn’t publish this (I do have a cranky public image to maintain), but this posting really got me (as the song says) In a Sentimental Mood.
I hadn’t thought of a Lane Cake, or a Caramel Cake, or a Coconut Cake (these were REALLY special back in the day) in, literally, years and years….until I came across Mrs Mayes’s mention of them in this posting. Just reading those names took me straight back to my childhood, and all of my Southern Great-Aunts’ households, where it was a Big Deal when one of them decided to make “HER” special Lane Cake or Caramel Cake or Coconut Cake. These were all women who never cooked a day in their life, except for wildly special occasions when they’d shoo everyone out of the kitchen (starting EARLY in the morning) and make one of the four cakes she’d learned how to bake before getting married (the other, which Mrs. Mayes somehow neglected to mention, was “MY Lady Baltimore Cake!”). The name of the cake was invariably preceded by a possessive pronoun….including those times when someone would announce “Well! Ezra Mae is going to make one of HER Coconut cakes for the Christmas Bazaar! Isn’t that nice?…”
Oh, in any case?…..I went down for my daily long, afternoon nap with the dogs….thinking “Who was it, in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ , who made such a fuss over her SPECIAL Lane Cakes?….”
I woke up around six yesterday afternoon, as snow was falling, and for some weird reason (probably having dreamed of childhood and cakes, courtesy of Ms. Mayes’s posting) wanted to make oatmeal cookies. I don’t ever eat sweets…haven’t in years. I never bake anything but savories. Still?…I found myself looking out at the snow falling (first time I’ve seen it this year), and I wanted to SMELL oatmeal cookies baking. I pulled out the Quaker Oats box and followed those not-exactly-complicated instructions.
No more than fifteen minutes later?….my kitchen here in North Carolina smelled just like my mother’s when I was a child. Appropriately enough, I telephoned her (hadn’t spoken to her since the day before yesterday), and we discussed memories of how southern ladies were so invested on those cakes of theirs.
It was a lovely way to spend a snowy/drizzly late afternoon. Of course, I have two dozen uneaten oatmeal cookies sitting on the kitchen table. I intend to give them to my neighbors later today.
In any case, thank you, Mrs. Mayes, for that obviously evocative posting. I should admit that I read it and (knowing full-well how my mother now indulges my nephews and nieces) immediately thought “Easy for a grandmother to make this sugar-monster for her grandchildren…..the kids’ parents are responsible for those dentist bills……”
sincerely,
David Terry
http://www.davidterryart.com
There is nothing like the desserts of childhood. In my travels I have eaten some rather elaborate, fancy, and famous desserts– but nothing beats the cherry chocolate cake my mom always made for my birthday. I make the same recipe myself but it is not the same to me when not baked in her orange bundt pan (my brother and I have told her she is never allowed to get rid of that pan!)
Childhood desserts are the best! In my travels and experience of living abroad I have had some rather well-known, fancy desserts– but nothing beats the simple cherry chocolate cake my mom always made (baked in the same orange bundt pan) for my birthday every year. I have told her she is never to get rid of that pan as I swear the cake tastes different when baked in a different pan!
Happy Birthday to your grandson!
I know what I’m baking when Lent is done! :)
Hi Frances,
Cake looks delicious! I am reading Everyday in Tuscany for the second time.
After reading all your thoughts on Italian food and the recipes you provide I, like others am looking forward to having all your recipes in one book.
I was wondering if someone may pay you the compliment of trying every one of
the recipes and then writing a blog about it! Shades of Julia and Julie! Just a thought.
I am calling the local Barnes and Noble to order my copy. I hope you have a successful book tour. Thank you. Gayle
Thank you for posting the recipe. My boys will definitely want to sample this!
Thank you for posting this! My boys will definitely want to sample it.
Hi Frances, I will try this for Thomas’ 5th birthday in April. I am sure it will be a huge success. See you soon oxoxoxo from Florence
Hi Frances, I, as well as half the world I am sure, am a fan. I have read all your italian books. They take me to another place. Now, I am going to the farewell party of my long time friend this Saturday. She is a chocoholic, so I know exactly what I am making to take along!