Tomorrow I embark on an important mission: the production of Tartine’s Devil’s Food Layer Cake. As you can tell from the aspirational picture (darn does that crumb top layer look amazing), this is a dreamy profusion of chocolate. But I think that Tartine makes a major mistake in this recipe. They bind the layers together with a simple caramel. Caramel is fine. But hazelnut praline is divine. So tomorrow evening the modification process begins—over half a pound of hazelnuts and hazelnut butter are prepared to go into this process— and the quest for the Platonic chocolate cake continues…
