Deadpool’s Creamy Custard Cake

If you’re not ready to invest hours a day into Hannibal quality food porn, yet always secretly wished your desserts looked more like gaping wounds, Deadpool is here to rescue you! Or get you arrested. It really depends on the angle of your Instagram photos.

Pie Filling:

4 room temp eggs, separated
¾ cup sugar
½ cup/1 stick butter, melted and cooled to room temp
2 ½ tsp cherry extract
½ tsp hazelnut extract (optional)
1 ½ tsp red food coloring
¾ cup ap flour OR Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Flour Substitute
2 cups full fat, room temp milk

Black Sprinkles:

¼ cup granulated sugar
5-6 drops black food coloring

Instead of cracking skulls, today you’re going to crack some eggs. Carefully, though. Unlike brain matter, which is great for splatter effects and sloppy zombie chow, you want to neatly separate the smiley face colored yolks from the slimy whites.

Set the yolks aside. First, you’re going to transform that puddle of dog snot into a winter playground for your action figures through the magic of friction. That’s right – it’s time to grab your mixer and beat the egg whites until they magically transform into a fluffy white meringue.

Shove those snowy peaks aside and grab the yolks. It’s time for them to make friends. Dump the egg yolks, sugar, and butter into another bowl and once more attack it with your stand mixer until the sloppy mess turns light and fluffy. You’ll know you’re done when it transforms from a gritty, wet, noir baking mix to a smooth, sunny yellow land of hope and optimism.

We can’t have that. Splash in the cherry extract, hazelnut extract (if you’re sexy) and red food coloring. Don’t skimp on the extract. When in doubt, add more. Otherwise, this recipe tastes super eggy. That’s fine if you really need to be reminded how much you hate baby chickens, but if you merely appreciate an all natural high protein food glue, you want a lot of extract. A. LOT.

If your red isn’t quite the right shade, you can always darken it up with 1-2 drops of black, but don’t go overboard or else you’ll end up with a Magenta that would do Magneto proud.

Once you’ve mixed in the extracts and color, it’s finally time for the flour. If you have Celiac disease or are gluten intolerant, this is a great recipe for gluten free flour substitutes. (Taste testers couldn’t tell the regular flour version from the one I made with Bob’s Red Mill gluten free baking mix substitute.)

Right now, it actually looks the right consistency for a cake batter. That’s all wrong. You want this to come out about the same color and consistency of fresh blood. Thin the batter by pouring in the milk, mixing gradually.

Fold the egg whites into the sloppy red mess. The end result will be a little lumpy, but that’s okay. The look fits with Deadpool’s complexion.

You really do want to follow the order of operations on this recipe. It may seem dumb to keep adding one thing at a time instead of efficiently tossing everything in the bowl at once, but this recipe is called a Magic Cake for a reason! You’re engaging in some moderate-core science here involving emulsification and specific gravity and proteins all so that when you bake this thing, it’ll naturally separate out into three layers – a light cake-like top, a smooth, wet, custardy center, and a dense creamy bottom.

Butter up a 9 inch round cake pan and pour in your thin, lumpy batter.

Bake at 325F for 40-50 minutes. Start checking on them at around 30 minutes. As soon as the middle is set and no longer jiggles when you poke the pan, go ahead and take it out of the oven. If you let the bars over-cook, the custard will solidify and instead of three intriguing layers, you’ll end up with one dense brick. The end result will still be tasty, but you’ll be missing out on a decadently creamy and smooth treat.

While the cake bakes, make your sanding sugar. Sure, you could buy some for a big sack of cash, but it’s a lot easier to add a few drops of food coloring to a bunch of sugar and just keep whisking it together until the sugar is the color you want.

That’ll occupy minutes of your time. To fill the rest, cut out your stencil. I used aluminum foil, but parchment paper would work just as well. You want a big circle and a line. Basic shapes to the rescue!

You’ll want to decorate the cake as soon as it comes out of the oven, but patience is the order of the day. See, you need to let this sucker cool down for a good 3 hours while the magic of heat and chemistry finish creating the final effect. Once the cake is completely room temperature and set, THEN carefully coax it out of the cake pan and onto whatever slab of ceramics you’re going to serve it off. Lay your stencil in place and carefully spread your blackened sugar. Mind the gap. No, really, it looks just like a British “mind the gap” sign, so use that as a reminder to pay a tiny bit of attention to keeping your sugar inside the stencil lines rather than flinging it around like a rabid weasel.

Finish him off with the blank side of two candy eyes or a couple dabs of white icing.

Ideally, when you cut into Deadpool’s face, it should look like a wet open wound where the blood has just started to congeal. Maybe he was attacked with a blowtorch. That would explain the cauterizing look of all that black sugar. Feel free to imagine whatever torture porn excites you as you take your first bite out of his face.