My Julia Child Project... aka Purple Cookbook Project

I remember when I first watched Julie & Julia. It must have been in '09 or '10, I was on a flight, I think I might have been going to Israel, but maybe it was Florida.  The story weaves the life of Julia Child  and her early culinary career in France and that of a woman named Julie, a New Yorker who wrote a blog about trying to make all the recipes in Julia`s book in just 365 days.
I was very inspired by the movie at the time. I remember thinking how I had to get my hands on Child's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking'.  When I did get a look in the book, I realized that I would not be able to try all her recipes, as she is a firm believer of using real butter. Lots of it.  Being that I keep kosher, that just wouldn't work.
Recently, I was looking through 'The Spice and Spirit', aka 'Purple Cookbook' aka 'The Bible of the Kitchen'.  I thought about how this used to be my go to cookbook for everything and has many great recipes.  Over the past few years, this cookbook took back stage, not because of its lack of quality, but because so many great cookbooks came out, that have beautiful pictures.  The pictures help wet your appetite and makes it so much more exciting to try the recipes.
I decided to use the inspiration from Julie Powell, and go through all the recipes in the 'Purple Cookbook'.  I'm going to document them all with pictures, and bring this cookbook back to the glory it deserves.  But unlike Julie, I don't plan to neglect my family, quite the contrary.
To please the family, I decided to start by baking a cake.  Who doesn't appreciate a fresh baked cake.  The black devil's food cake on page 356.  Although it's not as moist as I would have liked it, it was still a really decent cake, as I can see by the almost finished pan.