We bake cakes whenever a staff member at The Restaurant has a birthday. (Except mine, which fell on a closed day, but I bring it up all the time that I am offended I didn’t get my creme brulee cake in the shape of buttocks.) So last week it was one of the servers birthdays and he mentioned that he wanted a chocolate bacon cake. And I was to bake it. So my chefs brought in some cookbooks and I selected the World War II Chocolate Mayo Cake from America’s Test Kitchen: America’s Best Lost Recipes.

It sounds pretty gross, but makes sense when you think about it–mayo is made up of egg yolks and oil (plus a shitload of stablizing chemicals and preservatives if you use the store bought kind) . The advantage of using mayo in a cake? Super moisture. Moist like whoa. So moist that you don’t need milk with it. And no, it doesn’t taste like mayo.
Below you will find the recipe, which I fucked with a little.

Crap you need:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder (I’m not quite sure what this means as I don’t really like chocoalte and I don’t bake – I used whatever we had at The Restaurant)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup mayonnaise (I used Hellman’s Real Mayo)
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (please use real bourbon vanilla extract so your cake doesn’t taste like fake ass)
• 1 cup water

How we do:

1. Adjust oven rack to the middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9-inch baking pan (they recommend square, I used round). Sift flour, cocoa, baking powder, and baking soda in medium bowl.

2. Stir the mayonnaise, granulated sugar, and vanilla together in a large bowl until smooth. Add the water and stir until combined. Whisk in the flour mixture until incorporated. (I used the Kitchen Aid for this.) Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes. Cool completely in the pan, at least 45 minutes.

The frosting we used was a sour cream and sugar mix that I wasn’t too crazy about. We smoke our own bacon, so we took a hunk of it, sliced it, cooked it down and then candied it with some sugar and decorated the cake with it.

If I had to make it again, I’d reserve the fat rendered from the bacon and make the icing with that. Or even add it to the cake batter.

Maybe you like your cake a la mode? Here’s a recipe for candied bacon ice cream.

I didn’t have time to take a photo of it, so here’s a photo of someone else’s bacon cake:

I dub thee The Cartman Cake.