C.A.M - Mud Cake Scratch-Off - And the winner is....

So for the final test in this months scratch-off I invited over a few friends to help me sample each of the cakes and judge them each based on the flavor, moistness, and density.
I cut a portion of each cake into small 1.5cm pieces and set them out on the table, and labelled each one from A-E. Each person was given a piece of paper and pen to write down their thoughts on each cake, and a cup of tea or coffee to enjoy.

Bluehue's Chocolate Mud Cake:
Everyone agreed that this cake was very very rich. It also seemed to have an odd, nearly floury underlying flavor/aftertaste. It's a flavor that I've come across quite often in chocolate cakes, most people don't seem to mind, or even notice it, but DH and I have always being able to pick up on it and don't tend to enjoy cakes that have that flavor. It's a shame because I really, really wanted to like this cake, I'd heard so many wonderful things about Bluehue's mud cake but it just really wasn't enjoyable to me. It had a wonderful texture and density to it though and the coconut milk added a very unique richness to the cake. You couldn't pick up a coconut flavor until you were told that it contained coconut milk.

Pam's Chocolate Mud Cake:
This cake was very similar to Bluehue's mud cake, although without that extra richness added from the coconut milk. We could also detect that floury flavor/aftertaste that we detected in Bluehue's mud cake, which instantly turned off DH and I. It was still very rich however, and had a lovely texture and density to it. In fact, we had sorta cheated and prior to doing the proper tasting had cut some small slices out of each cake to test before our friends came over. My MIL and FIL when tasting the cakes the first time around both chose this cake as their favorite - although DH and I both disliked it due to the floury flavor/aftertaste. However, when we did the second blind tasting they both disliked this cake and my FIL even picked up on the same floury flavor/aftertaste that DH and I could detect.

Australian Womens Weekly Mississippi Mud Cake:
This was one of our favorites of all the cakes. It was sooo yummy BUT very very very rich!! We all agreed that this cake would be fantastic as a slice or brownie but was simply too rich for a cake - especially if used for a 4 layer cake with chocolate ganache and fondant!! We all kept going back for more, but could only eat a very very small piece at a time. It was a very dense, smooth cake, almost like dark chocolate fudge. It's certainly a recipe I would keep and make again, but as I explained to my taste testers I want to make cakes that taste delicious but aren't so rich that no one can ever finish their slice. I dislike being given slices of cakes that are so rich that I can only ever eat a couple of bites before being done.

Exclusively Foods Chocolate Mud Cake:
I'm not sure what went wrong with this cake. Remember when I made this cake that I felt as though something was off with the batter and the final product? The cake didn't look or feel the same as the others and the batter felt a different consistency. Well when we cut into this cake we found that oddly, rather than having the same fudge-like density of the other mud cakes, this cake was actually fluffy inside and nearly like a regular old chocolate sponge cake. It was nice in its own way, but certainly didn't resemble a mud cake! I used this recipe for my March cake and it turned out fine, however I had used the original quantities, whereas for the scratch-off I used their pan size ingredient chart to make a smaller 6" cake. I'm not sure if the error was in their calculations or if I made a mistake when making the cake. Either way, the final product wasn't really valid for testing, so we chose not to include this when comparing the different cakes as we didn't feel it truly represented an Exclusively Foods mud cake.

Best Recipe's Chocolate Mud Cake:
This cake had a lovely chocolatey flavor without the super-richness that the Mississippi mud cake had. It had a nice texture and density, although not quite as lovely a texture as Pam's and Bluehue's cakes had. In fact, this ended up being the cake that we all kept going back for more - and could finish each slice without feeling ill!

So we all sat around discussing the merits of each cake, and gorging on mud cake. I had to explain several times to my MIL and FIL that we weren't trying to find the 'truest' mud cake, but the best cake for using in my layer cakes under fondant. They kept leaning towards the Mississippi mud cake simply because it was rich and 'true mud cakes are rich'. I kept trying to explain that yes, true mud cakes are rich, but that's not the be-all end-all, it had to be a cake that guests will keep coming back for second and third slices - no one was going to be doing that with the Mississippi mud cake unless they were planning on being ill for the rest of the day and having an afternoon siesta! Lol, finally they understood what exactly we were looking for and we were ready to vote on our favorites:

A - Pam's chocolate mud cake:
No one voted this one as their favorite
B - Bluehue's mud cake:
No one voted this one as their favorite
C - Exclusively Foods mud cake:
Well obviously this one was taken out of the running so no one voted on this one
D - Best Recipe's chocolate mud cake:
Out of the seven of us voting on the cakes, 5 voted this as their favorite. The other 2 voted this as their second favorite!!
E - Australian Womens Weekly Mississippi Mud Cake:
2 voted this as their favorite cake, the rest of us voted this as our second favorite!

So you can see that there was a clear winner in this scratch test: Best Recipe's chocolate mud cake.
I was really surprised at this result, Bluehue and Pams mud cakes are touted among professional bakers as being among the best recipes but none of us enjoyed them that much (with the exception of my MIL and FIL the first time around - but they changed their minds when doing the blind tasting lol!), and this recipe was just a simple user submitted recipe on the Best Recipe's site. It was among the cheapest to produce of all the cakes, one of the easier ones to make (not that any of them were terribly difficult), and it was perfect for using in 4 layered fondant covered cakes. It's not too rich that you can't go ahead and have a second slice (or a third!), has a distinctly chocolatey flavor, was moist and had a lovely fudge-like density.