Sep 09, 2010
Wonderful! Everyone raved about this dessert, especially the crust. The only thing that needed changing is the ratio of melted butter to the crust mixture. If you make the given amount of crust (3 cups of chocolate cookie crumbs, which yields a thicker crust) then you need a full cup of melted butter. If you make a thinner crust of 2 cups of chocolate crumbs, then a half cup should be fine. For the cookie crumbs, I used chocolate animal crackers, but realized after the fact that chocolate graham crackers would have worked great as well. I almost left out the almond pieces in the crust, but they were actually one of the complimented aspects. And for those who don't like nuts--you can't taste it at all. I did use the full teaspoon of almond extract, and although I could really taste it in the batter, didn't think it was too strong in the finished product. I definitely wouldn't use more, but don't feel that less is needed unless you hate the taste of almond. The marble effect turned out well even though the "swirling" method with a knife didn't work for me; I think this method will only work if you pour the smaller amount of chocolate batter on the crust first and then pour the remaining vanilla batter on top. Be sure to follow instructions with baking and cooling. I didn't refrigerate overnight (4 hours before serving was sufficient), but be sure the cake is at room temperature before chilling otherwise it might crack. This will surely be a hit!
—Hayley
