Jordan: So this week happened.

Kitra: 😡

This week happened, and then I googled “rage cake recipe” and mostly got gender reveal cakes(?).

Which do, in fact, fill most of us with rage. Gender is a fucking construct you assholes, get it together and just buy some tiny baby overalls. They’re unisex.

Kitra is still in a generally angry mood.

😡

My first impulse was “what kind of cake involves smashing things” but alcohol was a close second. Smitten Kitchen, ever the source of great ways to drown your sorrows, provided us with this cake.

My response was “I am on board with the red wine cake provided I can write something along the lines of ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH on it in melted chocolate.”

Other options included “wtf y’all” and “honestly fuck Susan Collins” but we decided to keep it simple. Turns out I’m not half bad at icing in cursive. This is probably not what my third-grade teacher intended.

This cake is exactly what it claims to be. It tastes like wine and chocolate.

(Red Red Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiineeeeee)

The frosting tastes like sweetened condensed milk, though you could use a standard cream cheese frosting.

Speaking of sweetened condensed milk, during the making of this cake, I revisited some classic Buzzfeed quizzes including “What kind of milk are you?” which is deeply embedded in my personality.

“Do you want to start writing the blog post?” “Hold on, I need to finish finding out what kind of soup I am.”

I’m minestrone. She’s miso.

Getting back to the cake: It’s one-bowl, it’s not too sweet, and it includes two cups of wine. This is a cake to make when you want to smash the patriarchy, when you have that damn UB40 song stuck in your head, when you want to cry into dessert, or when you just want a good chocolate cake. Swear words highly encouraged, because fuck eloquent discourse.

So, from two 2% milks to all of you, have some rage cake.

Red Wine Chocolate Cake

This is the layer cake version from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, but the single-layer cake on the website is essentially identical.

The mascarpone in the frosting gives a noticeable dairy flavor, but you could sub cream cheese easily. Our frosting was a little thin and grainy, but we suspect it’s because our mascarpone was nearly room temperature. It should whip up better if you keep it cool. The online version has a very lightly sweetened whipped mascarpone topping instead, which would be good option for something that’s not so sweet.

Use whatever red wine you like; we used Wish Flower from Trader Joe’s because Jordan had an open bottle of it she wasn’t going to drink.

Ingredients

16 T (225g, 2 sticks) unsalted butter
2 cups (340g) packed brown sugar
⅔ cups (135g) white sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups red wine
2 tsp vanilla extract
2¾ cups (345g) flour
1⅓ cups (115g) cocoa powder
½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
¾ tsp ground cinnamon
¾ tsp salt

Directions

Preheat oven to 325°. Line three 8-inch cake pans with parchment paper and coat the insides with nonstick spray.

In a large bowl, cream butter with an electric mixer until smooth. Add brown and white sugar and continue creaming until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs and mix to combine, then add red wine and vanilla. Mix until more or less smooth; the batter will look somewhat curdled at this point, which is fine.

Sift all of the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients; no need to combine them in a separate bowl first. Mix until combined; a few lumps are okay.

Divide batter into prepared cake pans and bake for 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Let cool in the pans for 5-10 minutes, then remove cakes to wire racks to cool completely. When cool, top with frosting.

Mascarpone Frosting

Ingredients

16oz mascarpone
2⅓ cups (280g) powdered sugar, sifted
Pinch of salt
¼ tsp vanilla extract

Directions

Beat all ingredients with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.