Homemade chocolate cake - yes. I made it! Betty Crocker at your service!

I have always wanted to bake a cake by scratch. I have always wanted to bake a layered cake.  I also didn't want to just make one for fun, because then I would have an entire cake to eat by myself. That would be awesome bad, I know, so I waited for the perfect opportunity.

A few weeks ago, we had a lot of my family in town for the weekend that Ella was blessed. My brother Jason happened to be celebrating his birthday that Friday. So, guess what? I took that opportunity to feed a lot of people a lot of cake. And it was amazing! Probably hands down the best cake I have ever had. I will be using the recipe again in the future, that is for sure!

Want to hear something funny? After baking, layering and frosting this 2 layer cake as well as cupcakes, I did my best to make it look beautiful. And it looked pretty good!
 I had to drive it to the hotel everyone was staying at, and since Talon was out of town, I had it on the floor nicely placed on a pan with a lid so it wouldn't get dirty. Sadly, with all of the turns, the top layer of the cake slid off. HAHA. Seriously. I felt awful. It looked awful. But, before we embarked on the delicious challenge of eating it, I was able to put it back together mostly and it still tasted amazing!

Since I am all about sharing that which I love, I am going to share with you how I made this amazing cake. It is a very moist chocolate cake, with homemade whipping cream between layers and a homemade chocolate ganache. Yes, I know. AMAZING.

I'll direct you straight to the source of the chocolate cake and then explain what I did differently.
Find that recipe here. The recipe made enough for 2 round cakes and 15 cupcakes.

Now, the recipe calls for hot coffee. I'm not a coffee drinker, nor were any of the people I was making the cake for, so I googled the heck out of what I could substitute the coffee with. Lots of suggestions were just water, tea, liquor (again, not going to use liquor! haha We don't drink alcohol and there were a lot of kids at this birthday celebration!)  or some other liquid form I could use. I chose to use Starbucks Hot Cocoa mix. I found it at Target! Anyway, it worked out just fine! I made sure to make the water hot before mixing it with the cocoa and before adding it in the batter.

The last two ingredients are used for the frosting. I did not follow that, I found this recipe here that was perfect. On that note, the ganache wasn't setting quick enough for me to spread, so I whipped it up with the electric mixer until desired consistency. This made it very creamy and fluffy. I liked it like this!

For the whipping cream, I mixed up heavy cream and sugar until the flavor was just right. Mmmm.

After both cakes cooled completely, I put a whole bunch of the whipping cream on the first cake and then layered the second cake on top. Make sure to fill in any spaces on the side!

Be sure to assemble cake on a greased location because the cake will stick to wherever you place it!

Looks like a giant Oreo, right? 

For the cupcakes, I took out the center section and filled with whipping cream. Then frosted with the ganache. (Unfortunately, I was in a hurry to head out the door and didn't get a finished picture of it.)

The final product. Mmm. I'm craving some now! 

Let me know if you try this cake out! I can't wait to make it again. The greatest thing? It's rich, but not so rich that you take one or two bites and can't finish it. No, it's worse better, because you can't stop eating it and you just want more and more and more.

Enjoy!