TWD: Cinnamon Squares

When I first read through this week's TWD recipe, I pretty much knew that it wasn't going to be a favorite. Tracey from Tracey's Culinary Adventures chose Dorie's Cinnamon Squares for this week's assignment. Cinnamon Squares start out as a dense, butter-rich cake which is laden with cinnamon and bittersweet chocolate. Lots of cinnamon and chocolate! While I like them both a lot on their own, I'm not a big fan of cinnamon and chocolate combined. Still, I've been wrong before and made this cake anyway, hoping for the best.

Sorry folks, it's just not for me.

The cake didn't taste bad. In fact, it was actually pretty good. But, there was just way too much cinnamon in it for my comfort zone. Adding nine ounces of bittersweet chocolate to the mix didn't help much either. The whole thing was just too rich and strong for me. That said, If you're someone who really enjoys a pronounced, in-your-face cinnamon and chocolate flavor combination, you will probably love this cake. I think I would have probably enjoyed this one more without the dark chocolate. If I decide to attempt the cake again, I might try using white chocolate or a nice orange glaze instead. And, I definitely would cut down on the cinnamon.

Another interesting phenomena I encountered was that, shortly after I removed this cake from the oven, it sank in the middle like a lead balloon! It looked perfect for about 5 minutes....and then, it just.....fell! I baked it for about 50 minutes and a toothpick came out clean, so I'm not sure what happened. The cake was a little tough to frost with a huge crater in the middle of it.

I haven't had an opportunity to share this cake with anyone else yet, but I intend to bring it to my office today. If it goes over big, I'll be sure to let you all know.

If you'd like to try making Cinnamon Squares for yourself, the recipe can be found on Tracey's site. You can also see how the rest of the group fared with it on the Tuesdays with Dorie blogroll.