We threw a birthday party for Heather’s mom on Sunday, which meant we needed cake. Being who we are, we made a practice cake a few weeks ago. We went right to Flour, the cookbook from Joanne Chang’s Flour Bakery in Boston. We chose the Midnight Chocolate Cake with Milk Chocolate Frosting. It’s not an ultra-dense death-by-chocolate style, but it’s still got a rich chocolatey flavor and a nice tight crumb. The author describes it as “the simplest way I know how to make a cake.” I can assure you it’s not very simple, but if you read the instructions twice before starting, it’ll come out fine. It turned out we didn’t need the practice cake, but saying “practice” definitely has a nice ring to it as an excuse to have dessert for breakfast all week.

Mr. Bookdwarf did think the milk chocolate frosting in our first edition wasn’t chocolatey enough, so when we made it the second time, we used dark chocolate. I thought it was great both times, but he’s the chocolate fiend, so I let him call it on that one.

Both times, we wound up with about twice as much buttercream frosting as we needed. Fortunately, a friend came up with an amazing, and possibly dangerous idea: Use the frosting to take another Chang specialty over the top.

Yes, we did it.

We made dark chocolate buttercream sandwiches with brown-butter vanilla Rice Krispies treats.

They are delicious.

Joanne, if you’re reading this, we suggest that they go on the regular cafe menu.