Best. Cake. Ever.

Yesterday a good friend of mine invited us over for a belated birthday dinner. He promised to make his signature Chicken Marsala and I promised to bring dessert. I never did have a real birthday cake so I decided to go all out. And of course it had to be chocolate, because for me, there really isn't any other kind of cake.

I went to one of my favorite food sites, Smitten Kitchen, and started researching. Eventually I decided on this recipe and, boy, am I ever glad I did.

Here are all of the ingredients ready to go- I even purchased 10" cake pans specifically to make it. Reconfiguring the recipe to fit my measly 8.5" round pans required math, and I don't do math. The extra few inches of cake were so worth it.

I used two different types of chocolate- a good quality semi-sweet bar and some Hersheys unsweetened coco powder. The recipe called for melting the semi-sweet chocolate with hot coffee, something I had never done before, but I have heard that coffee brings out the flavor of chocolate and makes it richer. Boy, were they right.


Unfortunately I was in such a rush towards the end that I didn't take the time to take pictures of the Seven Minute Frosting, or of the cake before we tore into it.

Sorry- I think I am lucky I managed to get a picture of it at all before it was decimated. Mmmmm I am drooling just looking at the picture. Definitely my new favorite cake recipe.