Chocolate Birthday Cake

Made this cake last weekend for my brother-in-law-to-be's birthday, with some help from my SO. My awesome new KitchenAid Pro Limited Edition mixer (which deserves a separate blog of its own) made quick work out of the various components and was a joy to work with. The cake itself consisted of chocolate cake with a truffle filling and coffee frosting. Its walls are coated with chopped walnuts I had lying around (a last-minute addition to hide the airy holes in the whipped American-style frosting) and the rosettes on top are given an appropriate finishing touch with chocolate-covered espresso beans. I took a chance on an "untested" chocolate cake recipe from Best Recipes; between us Lana and I have made quite a few of the desserts from that book, and very few ever worked out right. This cake, however, was fantastic. It was light, tender, with a mild but definitely noticeable chocolate flavor, and no weird sour aftertaste. It's my new favorite chocolate cake recipe.

All in all, a tasty combination, but as you can imagine from such a rich cake, it went down like a lump of lead and kept us up all night!