Brooklyn Blackout Pizza

This recipe channels an iconic, lost (its inventor, the commercial bakery Ebinger’s, went out of business in 1972), and obsessed-over New York City chocolate dessertcake — the Brooklyn Blackout Cake, a three-layer devil’s food cake slathered with chocolate pudding and frosting and dramatically covered with cake crumbs — and reinterprets it as a dessert pizza on homemade cocoa dough. While it’s a bit of a labor of love, the result is a showstopper, with various layers of chocolate and texture.

Note: While baking, the dough may start to bubble in places with no chips, and the chips may slightly darken and burn. Most imperfections will be forgiven post-bake, as you slather chocolate chips over the dough base.

Featured in: Brooklyn Blackout Pizza: A Labour of Love and Nostalgia

Arthur Bovino is Ooni’s Head of Pizza Content. Arthur is the founder of the 101 Best Pizzas in America and author of “Buffalo Everything: A Guide to Eating in ‘The Nickel City’” and “The Buffalo New York Cookbook: 70 Recipes from The Nickel City.” You can follow him on Instagram @nycbestpizza.

Time
35 minutes

Yield
Makes two 8- or 10-inch pizzas

Equipment
mixing bowls
scale
cooling rack
offset spatula

Difficulty
Medium/Hard

Ingredients
2 x 270-gram Cocoa Dough balls (for 8- to 10-inch pizzas)
360 grams chocolate pudding
150 grams dried cake crumbs
250 grams moist cake crumbs (optional)
220 grams dark chocolate chips

Prepare the dough, pudding, and cake crumbs in advance; remove your cocoa dough from the fridge at least two hours before baking. Preheat your oven to between 425 to 490°C.

Stretch your dough ball out to the desired size. Turn the ball out onto a lightly floured surface. Carefully open it as you normally would until you reach the desired size. The chocolate may make the dough slightly more resistant. If that’s the case, let it rest for a few minutes before stretching again.

If you find the edges begin to get ragged, cup the cornicione with your non-dominant hand and use your fingers to press the dough up against the inside of your palm, repeating all the way around.

When ready to bake, place the base on a lightly floured peel, evenly coat with half the chocolate chips and launch into the oven. Bake for 30 seconds on high heat, turning halfway through. Turn off the flame completely and let the pizza cook in the residual heat for 40 seconds to a minute, turning to ensure the crust cooks evenly all the way around.

Remove the pizza to a peel or rack to cool. Use an offset spatula to spread the melted chocolate chips out to the edge of the base, leaving a centimeter or so of bare crust.

Once the pizza has cooled, use the offset spatula to evenly coat the base with a half-centimeter layer of pudding (about 180 grams per pizza).

Use a tablespoon to evenly scatter a coating of dried cake crumbs (100 to 150 grams per pizza) on top of the pudding layer. Avoid pressing down.

Finally, top the pizza with a layer of moist cake crumbs (about 125 grams per pizza).

Cut into 6 slices and serve.