Happy Birthday Chip!

 Mmmm....truffles.....nothing like home made truffles, filled with one hazelnut, nutella spread, and rolled inside of a dark chocolate ganache, rolled in chopped nuts....mmm, mmm.  I must admit, those Ferrero Rochers are pretty darn tasty too!  And the reason for these yummy truffles??  Chip's birthday!

Evo, one of my friend from back in the days, had contacted me about baking up a cake for her boyfriend's birthday.  The both of them live in the Bay area and would be in San Diego during the holidays, so she thought it would be a great idea (and it was, in my opinion) for me to bake her a cake.  The only criteria for the cake is that there be tons and tons of chocolate, as Chip loves chocolate!  No problems there!!  I love chocolate too, but I ran into some problems with the overall look of the cake.  Unfortunately, the figments of my imagination just doesn't work that well.  I know, unfortunate, huh?  That, and also because I've been making a lot of baked goods for the ladies in my life, so, you know, lots of flowers and ribbons and fu fu stuff going on.  But strictly for a guy??  I'm not so sure Chip would appreciate pastel fondant flowers and ribbons!  I mean, I'm sure he will appreciate the work that goes into fondant, but it's so, well, girly.  So off I go, figuring out ideas for a more "manlier" cake, but making it festive enough to be a birthday cake, and not just a boring 'ol chocolate cake.

I played around with a lot of different ideas.  One of them was to use chocolate fondant...but I feel that fondant is just so not tasty, even if it was chocolate.  Another option was to make chocolate plastique, which I've never made before, but heard that it tastes like a tastier tootsie roll.  My last option was to dabble with ganache.  Ganache is always yummy, so I decided to go that route, and seeing that chocolate was the order, I thought: why not??  The whole cake will be chocolate everything!  So, the cake was supposed to be kind of like a "mother-load" cake.  It was supposed to be four cake layers and three cream layers.  Somewhere along slicing the cake in half and filling it in, I seem to have lost a layer of cake.  I know, right??  HOW does that happen?!  I was pretty surprised myself, too, because I almost put buttercream on top of a cake layer and reached over to get the last cake to top off the cream, but reached at nothing instead.  Shocked myself for a second there.  But ah well, I made do with three cake layers and two cream layers.  Inside, I made chocolate cake and layered them with a light chocolate buttercream and a raspberry buttercream, in which I also sprinkled freeze dried raspberries to give the taste some tart, opposed to all that sweet!  I then crumb coated the cake in white chocolate ganache and let it set, while I whip up the rest of the white chocolate ganache to spread over the cake.  I must say, whipped gananche is pretty darn tasty!  It tasted like a light, whipped chocolate...well, I guess that's because that's what it is...The only thing is, it slightly hardens once it sits.  So, I spread the white chocolate ganache over my cake and then poured dark chocolate ganache on top, letting is spill over the sides to create the "spilled" (?) look.  Although, my spilled look didn't make me happy.  It spilled wrong.  I'm beginning to think that the side "spilled" look is actually contrived and real bakers do not actually let it "spill" uncontrollably over the sides.  Doh!  Lesson learned...And because it wasn't a cupcake, I had to make do with the cake as is too.  I did put some ribbon around the bottom of the cake ( I actually layered up the ribbon, but the previous picture only shows the one layer of ribbon.)

I was able to find a box that was somewhat tall enough for this cake...I couldn't exactly close the box, but it worked.  I took the cake with me and met up with Evo and the birthday "princess" for dinner that night, along with a bunch of other cool people.  We ate at a cool restaurant in Hillcrest, and for those of you who know about Hillcrest, knows that the parking is horrendous there.  Of course it was a Friday night too...I found parking about one huge long block away.  And let me tell you, this cake was pretty heavy!  I actually felt like I had an arm workout just from carrying this cake to the restaurant!  I had decided not to bring my fancy camera...as it's big and obtrusive.  And since I just got the new iPhone, I decided to just use my phone to take pictures of the cake with the birthday boy.  But lo and behold, it totally slipped my mind.  I must blame Evo for this, as she made me forget because we had to have one of those Asian arguments about her trying to pay for this cake and me not wanting her money.  Yep...totally her fault that I forgot to snap a picture of Chip and the cake.  We even put in one fun candle too...in which our poor waiter had to do a "show and tell" kind of sharing of the cake, and walked around the table (there was 12 of us, so it was a big table!), holding a 20 pound cake, and then letting Chip blow the candle.  Super fun times...suffice it to say, our waiter was tipped very well!

I had a great time making this cake and seeing Evo and Chip and the rest of the gang again.  It's always fun maddness with them!  Thanks for being my guinea pigs!

Cheers!