Wrestling With Food: Sexual Chocolate Cake a la Mark Henry

The WWF Cookbook is a treasure trove of crazy recipes from the Attitude Era, each of which is purportedly the creation of one of the wrestlers. In Wrestling With Food, Sydney is on a mission to try cooking all of them to see if any are actually edible.

This is VERY exciting.  It’s like Julie & Julia, by way of the WWE. So, each week, I’ll be testing one recipe from ‘Can You Take the Heat?  The WWF is Cooking!’ (as covered in The Merch Table). I’ve thumbed through it before and marveled at the options – Grand Master Sexay’s Sweet Potato Casserole and Road Dogg’s Fried Green Tomatoes, for instance – picturing these lovable scamps slaving away over a hot stove making dishes for the weekly potlucks hosted at Steve Blackman’s house (this has to be a real thing, don’t tell me it’s not.)

Recently, I already planned to make a beef stew, so I needed something for dessert.  When I saw this handsome individual:

I knew I wanted to test out Mark Henry’s “Sexual Chocolate” Cake.

The ingredients:

1 package devil’s food cake.

1 (12 oz) can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk.

1 (8 oz) jar caramel ice cream topping.

1 (8 oz) carton Cool Whip.

3 Skor or Heath candy bars, crumbled.

The process:

I assembled the ingredients.

You’ll note I did not obtain the Eagle Brand condensed milk, and that’s because my local stores didn’t have that brand. Let’s hope the recipe doesn’t hinge on that. I appreciate Mark Henry’s brand loyalty, though.

I prepared the cake as directed on the box and went about my business.

About 30 minutes later – Cake is done!

I let it cool about five minutes, and then punched a bunch of holes in the cake with a fork.

I wish I had something like a skewer to poke more even holes, but hey, you live, you learn. I poured the can of condensed milk over the cake, and then got a little alarmed. This looked gross.

I will note right now that the good Lord Henry did not include very clear directions, and in fact this recipe only had three instructions:

1. Mix and bake the cake according to the directions.

2. Perforate the cake with a fork or a toothpick (HOW MANY TIMES, MARK?). Pour the can of milk over the cake. (WHEN???)

3. Top with the caramel topping and cover with Cool Whip. Sprinkle with the candy bars and serve.

Way to go, Mark. I had to Google several different recipes of this type of cake (which, by the way, is known as the “Better than Sex” cake on most websites) to find out really what I’m supposed to do with this cake during this process. So, the Internet tells me I’m to let the cake cool down even more, then pop it in the fridge. Done.

A little while later, it was TIME. This cake was about to get real. I drizzled the caramel topping over the top and then spread it out somewhat evenly with a knife.

Taking the Cool Whip out of the fridge, I slopped that stuff on and spread it haphazardly. Finally, I sprinkled the Heath crumbles over the whole thing.

Like a deep fried Oreo, I suspect this is the type of dessert you need to report to your doctor when you go for a check-up.

The verdict:

My darling husband Tom was my taster for this recipe (and will be for most of them going forward, unless I throw caution to the wind). Comments from Tom:

“That’s a LOT of Cool Whip.”

“It’s not bad, but I think this is the most I can eat in one sitting.” (The serving was approximately three inches squared.)

“I can feel all the sugar coating my teeth”.

But surprisingly, this was still given 3 out of 5 stars by Tom.

And there you have it.  While I suspect we won’t go back to this one for seconds before throwing it out, it’s entirely edible and not that gross.

(NOTE FROM TOM: I actually went back to it a few days later for another try, but this time I microwaved it for 30 seconds – this bumped it up to 4 stars because all the toppings melted into the cake and it was that much tastier. However, we still ended up having to throw out, like, two thirds of it because it’s a ridiculous amount of cake for a two person household.)

– Look out for another Wrestling With Food soon! In the meantime, you can follow Sydney on Twitter.