Devil's Food White Out Cake - Dorie Greenspan

I made this white out cake by Dorie Greenspan.  But I only made the cake part, not the marshmallow cream frosting.  And I didn't crumble a layer on the outside of the cake.  I was simply making it to taste the flavor and texture of the cake portion.  In all the reading and research I've done on cakes the past few weeks, Dorie's name has come up quite a bit.  I am going to buy her cookbook that seems to be the most popular among bakers.  Her name is familiar to me, so I'm guessing she's been around awhile and is pretty famous in the baking world.  I'm showing my ignorance by admitting I didn't know who she was until now.

I used Hersey for the cocoa powder since it's the only brand I had on hand and Ghirardelli for the semi sweet and bitter sweet chocolates.  I baked it for 25 minutes on 325, instead of 350, rotating once.  I think I should have baked for 23 minutes. 

The taste of this cake is totally different from the other two I made.  It's far less sweet.  Really more chocolately than sweet, if that makes sense.  It's super dense.  I like dense cake, but this was almost too dense for even me.  It was a heavy, hardy and stable cake, and would be ideal for carving for specialty cakes covered in fondant.
I need to figure out how to lighten it up just a little bit and I think it would be perfect.  I like it because it isn't too sweet, whereas DJ didn't like it as much because of the lack of sweetness.  I figure every cake is gonna have frosting, which is almost always too sweet, so this is a nice compliment to the frosting.  I made a chocolate cream cheese frosting from Cupcake Project to go with the cake and the two combined were way yummy.

I want to try this cake recipe out as cupcakes too.

I'm going to remake the frosting with some personal variations.  Here is my adaptation of the recipe, to be tried on the next cake.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

10 oz softened cream cheese (possibly 12 ounces)

1/4 C unsalted butter, softened

3-3 1/2 c sifted powdered sugar

1/2 c cocoa powder

1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

1. Cream butter and cream cheese in a mixer
2. Mix in powdered sugar, 1 cup at a time
3. Mix in cocoa powder and vanilla