Heavenly Birthday Cake!!

I'll be the first to admit that chocolate cake with chocolate icing is not my favorite type of cake. I've requested a marble cake with sweet butter icing every year since before I could remember but this year would be different because my mom's oven is broken and baking a cake in a toaster oven might prove difficult. So I asked Kyle to take care of my cake this year and we'd bring it to Long Island where we'd celebrate with my family, as we do every year.

My only request was that he call the baker who made our wedding cake last year and ask her to bake a small cake - the flavor and icing were his choice - but no chocolate/chocolate. I guess a million things happened between that request and week of my birthday (8/19 in case anyone is wondering ;) ) and the call to the baker never happened. Needless to say, Kyle felt really bad and offered to make the cake himself. Wow. What a nice suggestion. And to be honest, I wasn't at all worried about how it would turn out because he's actually very adept in the kitchen. All he needed was a recipe and for me to be around if he needed help.

What recipe did I choose? Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake with Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Icing. Yes, that's right...a chocolate/chocolate cake. Funny indeed. I had heard wonderful reviews about this cake and hadn't yet gotten the chance to make it so I figured this would be as good of a time as ever (and I wouldn't have to do any work to enjoy it!).

The result? Absolute chocolate perfection. The cake was perfect. The icing was perfect. EVERYONE raved about it and couldn't believe that Kyle made this cake - and their jaws literally dropped when I told them that he made it from scratch! My brother, who I seriously don't think has ever eaten a whole piece of birthday cake in his life had SECONDS! He even requested that Kyle make his birthday cake in November. (Sorry Mom!!)

I'm not going to post the recipe because my iterations in this post have gotten away from me but let me say a couple of things: Kyle made the cake and icing the night before we ate it. We wrapped the cake in SaranWrap, refrigerated it overnight, and put the two in a cooler for our 2 hr drive. The cake arrived without incident (no cracks) and it was iced right before birthday candles were added. He also made 1 and a half of the icing recipe but we agreed that it probably should have been doubled.

DON'T hesitate to make this cake - it's totally worth it!!!

(And go ahead and add the perfect complement: vanilla ice cream!)