another year, another chocolate cake.

We just celebrated another birthday for H, which means I just made another iteration of chocolate cake (remember that crazy tower of Reese's from last year?). I love my husband dearly, and I would go to the ends of the earth for anything he ever wanted, but sometimes I fear I will run out of inventive ways to achieve "chocolate cake", and I wish, just once, he would request, say, a lemon genoise. Because his birthday cakes are not just general riffs of the concept of chocolate cake; they are actually all permutations of the exact same cake recipe. He tells me, if it's not broken, don't fix it. I say, sometimes I'd just like a reason to flex my vanilla baking muscles, you know?

I thought I was being so clever this year when I picked out this indulgent mocha cream number, with a sour cream (!) ganache and everything; it would be chocolate, but not the SAME chocolate. I bookmarked it, quickly skimmed it to make sure I had everything on hand, then forgot about it until the eleventh hour. As I started prepping all my stuff at baking time and read through the recipe for the first time (never do that, by the way), I discovered that she also uses THE cake recipe. So there I was, making that crazy chocolate cake for the umpteenth time. I guess the universe was also trying to convince me not to fix that which is not broken.

Since we have no business consuming a full-size layer cake between the two of us, I made a petite cake and a dozen cupcakes. Six cupcakes went to work with H for his co-workers, and he returned later that day with an empty tin and several tales of undulating praise. One person actually insisted it was the best cupcake he had ever eaten. Emphasis on "ever".

The cake shown here is made from two 6-inch cakes, each split after cooling to yield a total of four layers. I also used regular chocolate frosting in place of the sour cream ganache in The Hungry Mouse's recipe.  I was really excited to try the ganache, until our furnace broke during a snowstorm, so... I kind of had my hands full.  As always, I used cake flour, balsamic vinegar, and dark cocoa, but feel free to use all-purpose, white or apple cider, and regular, respectively. It will still be amazing.

(In case you missed the links above, the mocha cake recipe is HERE. The basic chocolate cake recipe is HERE.)