This was the first cake I made in a looooong time - I was feeling a bit anxious and a bit excited about making it for my good friend’s birthday last Friday. It turned out pretty good. It was super-sweet, but hey, it’s a birthday cake - right?

Also, I don’t have a lot of skills in the decorating department, but it still turned out okay. It looked a lot prettier in slice form because there were alternating layers of dark chocolate and light coloured frosting. Mmmm…

 The original recipe can be found here. It calls for a different flavor combo involving coffee. Sounded good, but my friend isn’t into coffee. Instead I modified it to have a vanilla and brandy flavor. I thought it was a good alternative. Malt could have been good too!

Another little change was that I decorated it with chocolate malt balls. I would also recommend just pouring the chocolate ganache all in one go at the end, rather than in two steps like the recipe said. That’s how I got those drippy marks on mine - I was not happy about them!