Snackshot Of The Day: Ebinger's Blackout Cake

The Daily Meal's editors, contributors, and readers dig into some pretty great restaurants, festivals, and meals. There's not always enough time to give a full review of a restaurant or describe in depth why a place, its food, and the people who prepare it are noteworthy, so Snackshot of the Day does what photographs do best, rely on the image to do most of the talking. Today's Snackshot is a photo taken March 18, 2011, of Entenmann's Blackout Iced Cake, an homage to the long lost Ebinger's classic.

The GutterGourmet a frequent contributor to The Daily Meal, once described the Ebinger's original as "an anomaly of physics, a magician baker's trick, the secret of which may well be lost to the ages." Why? "Unlike the sugary, dense, frosted buttercream that fills and tops cakes and cupcakes that are all the rave today thanks to the proliferation of cupcake shops, Ebinger's Blackout Cake eschewed frosting altogether. Instead, Blackout Cake was a quivering mass of chocolate pudding filled and topped with chocolate cake crumbs. A veritable inside out cake with no discernible means of holding it together — it defied the law of gravity. It also defied the law of taste, because it was so light, so chocolaty, so freakin' good."

The Entenmann's version, while not a dead ringer for the original, may still do enough, at least for a moment, to recall its pleasures. If you can find it that is. The "New" cake that launched last year, no longer seems to be on the Entenmann's website, reinforcing the ephemeral nature of this Brigadoon cake. For more Ebinger's nostalgia read Gutter's full post, In Search of Ebinger's Blackout Cake.

Read more about The Daily Meal's Snackshot feature. To submit your own photo, email jbruce[at]thedailymeal.com, subject line "Snackshots."

 

Arthur Bovino is The Daily Meal's executive editor. Follow Arthur on Twitter.