Noah's Chocolate Birthday Cake

Chocolate cake is not my favorite thing. Is it yours? I feel like it tends to be dry and just doesn't interest me. So when I asked Angela what flavor Noah would like for his birthday cake I cringed when she said "chocolate or strawberry". I would have normally gone with strawberry but he's 4 and likes firetrucks and I thought the pink cake would clash with the truck. So that leaves chocolate - sigh. I started by telling you that so you'd understand that when I tell you I ate an entire piece of this cake, it is seriously not a normal thing for me! This one turned out so moist (gross word but best cake texture), rich, chocolatey...and even though it weighed a ton (I think 'cuz of the cars on top!) the cake was very light - not easy to do with a chocolate cake. I'm pretty sure that, once again, the secret is filling it with stabilized whipped cream (are you tired of my mentioning stabilized whipped cream yet? HA!).

I made a doctored up boxed triple chocolate chip cake mix (extra egg, scoop of sour cream, dash of vanilla, small box of chocolate pudding) in 2 9"pans. Let them cool; meanwhile, make 2 cups of stabilized whipped cream (click here for the recipe) and buttercream frosting. Divide the buttercream so you can dye a small portion red for the name, leave enough white to frost just the top of the cake, then add cocoa powder to the rest to make chocolate frosting.

After they cooled completely, put one layer on a serving plate and tuck small pieces of parchment or waxed paper under the edges all the way around to keep the plate clean while decorating. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a big open tip with the chocolate buttercream frosting and pipe a fat circle on top of the cake layer around the top edge. This creates a dam to keep the whipped cream inside the cake. Then spread lots of whipped cream inside the frosting circle on top of the bottom cake layer. Top with second layer and frost the top with white frosting, and the sides with chocolate buttercream.

To decorate I searched for a firetruck but of course couldn't find one...I did find this set of little trucks tho and one is a firetruck so I changed my plan a little. Using a smaller round cardboard circle to mask the top of the cake and keep it clean, I sprinkled crushed chocolate wafers around about 1.5" of the outer top edge - then lifted off the cardboard and piped his name in red frosting using a small pastry tip. To finish I piped big swirly stars in a pattern around the top and bottom (using them to hold the trucks from tipping off the cake - the cookie crumbs made it so the cars wouldn't stick!), then put thin oreos around the bottom (they reminded me of tires)...of course when Noah saw the cake the first thing he did was pull oreos off hahahah.



PS: I washed the trucks before putting them on the cake!

PPS: I added some seedless strawberry jam to the top of the bottom layer of cake before the whipped cream to tie in the second flavor he likes, but everyone said they couldn't taste it at all and wouldn't bother adding it next time. Did it help make the cake so moist? Maybe, but you really didn't notice it so...I'll leave it up to you if you want to add it!

Buttercream Frosting:

-1 stick soft unsalted butter

-4 cups confectioners sugar

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-pinch of coarse salt

-milk or cream (a couple tablespoons, add a little at

a time until you get the right consistency)

cream the butter until smooth, add the

remaining ingredients and beat until smooth

and fluffy.