Our connoisseur of cool, Bobby Black, turns his coworkers on to cannabis cake direct from the dark side, perfect for Yule, the longest night of the year.
As loyal High Times readers already know, our office’s own unique version of casual Friday has come to be known as “Space Cake Friday” in honor of the tradition that consistently inspires one of the more culinarily inclined employees to bake up a special treat to share with the rest of us at the end of each week. I’m a decent cook, though not much for baking (cookies, anyway), but after having enjoyed the fruits of others’ labor for more than a year, I decided it was high time to strap on the apron (hey, it’s black with skulls, so it’s still cool) and whip something up for our annual holiday party. But this must be no ordinary cake. After all, I have a reputation for decadence to uphold. Oh no, it had to be a confection of such pure sinfulness that a single bite would reduce even a seasoned stoner to a drooling zombie, yet a treat so sinisterly sweet it would smack the most devoted weight-watchers clean off their wagon. Simply put, I set out to create the most diabolical dessert man has ever known—and damned if I didn’t succeed.
Bobby Blackout Cake—based on the famous Brooklyn Blackout Cake I enjoyed many times growing up in Bensonhurst—came to life as a triple-chocolate nightmare: devil’s food cake with dark-chocolate syrup in it, infused with a half ounce of post-vaporizer cannabis dottle and one and a half grams of dark hash, with dark-chocolate pudding in the center and dark-chocolate frosting on top (as well as hash sprinkles). Now, sure, I could lie and tell you this was all a variation on a secret Black family recipe that my grandmother bequeathed me on her deathbed, but let’s be honest: I bought the mixes from a supermarket. Hey, I told you I wasn’t much for baking. Nevertheless, I spent most of Thursday night putting the finishing touches on my masterpiece before placing it in a decorative holiday tin.
The next day when we went out for our holiday lunch, I sprung the Blackout Cake on my unsuspecting coworkers, and it was the hit of the party—so decadently seductive that the entire tin practically disappeared right before my eyes despite clear warnings about its substantially stony strength. Naturally, my hardened coworkers managed to take it all (mostly) in stride, but if you woke up this past Christmas morning and didn’t find any presents under your tree, I must extend my deepest apologies. You see, I saved one slice for Santa and left it out for him with a glass of milk on Christmas Eve. When I woke up the next morning, he was passed out on my couch with dark chocolate pudding smeared all over his long white beard.
Oops … my bad!
—Bobby Black
STONES 12
½ cup vegetable oil
½ ounce finely ground cannabis buds
2 grams black hash
One 18.25 ounce box Betty Crocker SuperMoist dark chocolate cake mix (with Hershey’s Special Dark Syrup)
3 eggs
One 3.9-ounce box Jell-O chocolate instant pudding
2 cups cold milk
One 16-ounce tub Betty Crocker Rich & Creamy dark chocolate frosting
Equipment: Cheesecloth or fine mesh strainer
1. Preheat the oven to 400°F.
2. In a small saucepan over low heat, combine the oil and the cannabis and simmer for about 40 minutes, then strain to separate the cannabis fiber from the infused oil. Return the oil to the pot and add 1½ grams of the hash and simmer another 15 minutes until the hash is entirely melted.
3. Mix together your cake mix following the package directions, adding the eggs, 1⅓ cups water, and the infused oil and mixing together. Pour the cake mixture evenly into two lightly greased 8-inch round cake pans and bake for about 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.
4. Now, beat the pudding mix into the milk, according to the package directions for making the pudding. Once the cakes are cool, put one cake layer down on a plate, spread the pudding over top, then top with the second cake layer and frost. Grate the remaining gram of hash over the top of the cake for a decorative, sprinkle-like effect.
A seventeen-year veteran of High Times, Bobby Black writes and edits for the magazine and also hosted a popular radio show, Contact High, on Sirius’s Hard Attack channel. Founder of the Miss High Times contest and director of our annual Doobie Awards, Bobby is our office authority on paganism, comic books, sci-fi, and stoner rock.