This chocolate blackout sheet cake is for serious chocolate lovers only, topped with dark chocolate glaze and a layer of sweet and salty cookie crumbles.

Darker than the darkest night, this sheet cake recipe takes dark chocolate to entirely new depths. The cake itself is moist and surprisingly light, with an intense dark chocolate flavor that takes center stage. Add to that a rich chocolate glaze and crunchy cookie crumbs liberally sprinkled on top and you’ve got yourself one heck of a sheet cake.

Set your expectations aside: this is unlike any chocolate sheet cake you’ve ever encountered. Typical it is not. Far from it.

It’s is a true grown-up chocolate cake with a intensity of flavor unlike any cake I’ve made before. Comparing this cake to a typical Texas sheet cake is like comparing a piece of expensive ultra dark chocolate and a gas station candy bar. I mean, talk about night and day.

For one thing, it’s not nearly as sweet as most chocolate sheet cakes, with a more intense chocolate flavor thanks mostly to the addition of black cocoa as well as Dutch processed. 

The glaze falls somewhere in between a chocolate donut glaze and silky smooth, bittersweet chocolate ganache. The best of both worlds, if you will, and certainly not your typical shiny and saccharine sheet cake glaze (and I really don’t mean to keep ripping on Texas sheet cake here, I actually like them, but most people are familiar with what a Texas sheet cake is so it makes a good reference point to help me describe what this cake is, and what it is not).

The final touch is the chocolate cookie crumb, adapted from Christina Tosi’s recipe. The crunchy, salty crumbs taste like a grown up Oreo cookie, less sweet and with a more pronounced chocolate bitterness (in a pinch you could use crushed up Oreos here instead). They’re also delightfully salty, the perfect textural contrast and flavor amplifier.

It’s the combination of the glaze, crumb, and a liberal dose of sprinkles that makes this cake so gloriously messy. You’ll have crumbs and sprinkles on your lap and smudges of chocolate on your face, but, you know what? You won’t care because it’ll be the best piece of chocolate cake you’ve ever devoured.

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