Birthday Cake!

I have managed to become the birthday cake person with the Boy's family, I'm not sure how but I have.  Two years ago a cupcake or cookies was all I could manage and now I'm pulling off multi-layer cakes, it's beyond stressful but has it's moments where it's fun.

A few months ago I bookmarked I recipe I came too via my fave food porn site, Tastespotting.  It was a gorgeous photo of a special looking cake from Sweetopolita, it immediately went into the file of things that I always mean to make and rarely find the time to get to.  When I was asked to make a birthday cake for the Easter potluck dessert, I knew that this was just thing.  Special enough for the person whose birthday it was, just a bit festive, with the strawberry layers for Easter, had chocolate for the birthday boy and would utilize some of my homemade jams.

I took liberties with the icing since I was making the cake for a man, girlie pink icing didn't seem right and since he is a chocolate fan I went with a rich chocolate ganache.  The ganache ended up being the most popular part of the cake.  All of the kids ate it off of their pieces of cake and refused to share! I do hope I have an excuse to make it someday with the pink icing.

My sliced cake is far from as gorgeous as the inspiring photo, but boy was it delicious.  I turn off the food blogger/photographer when it's someone else's day but did grab a shot of the remnants of the cake.  It's not as clean as Rosie's but regardless I find the rich chocolate, fluffy white and bright pink layers completely irresistible.

Rosie did such a great job describing the cake and since I used her recipe for the cakes and assembly exactly, I highly suggest just heading over to her site if you want to make it yourself.  Especially because I think the recipe for the chocolate layers is my new go to chocolate cake recipe.

Enjoy!