There is an outrageous amount of chocolate going on today! How do you feel about that? (Feel free to insert your positive exclamations here ->_____! i.e. Heck YES!) Said chocolate also comes with an outrageous amount of pictures. I promised myself I was going to get better about that but I think I may actually be getting worse. It’s just so hard to stop snapping pictures when there is this much chocolate beauty to be captured, you know? So I made this for Jenya’s 19th birthday and, I could be wrong, but I think it says a lot about how much I love her. I’ve actually been waiting all week to share this because her birthday was on Sunday, but it just felt like this cake should be saved for Friday. I’m glad I waited because now I get to share it with you! I’m going to try keeping things short today for multiple reasons. Firstly, I’ve been extra busy the last few days because we had a big group of friends over for dinner yesterday and I spent the entire day, plus the day before, doing prep stuff and tons of baking. It was one of those type of gatherings that starts out as small thing and just keeps growing. It ended up that we were going to have six different families together, but then the first family we had invited, the ones we had basically planned the whole dinner around, had to cancel because of a fever. Then we also got rained out all day, but the good news is that the food turned out great and I think everyone had a good time. The guys grilled steaks and sausage out on the grill and I did all the appetizers, sides (one of which was a creamy potato au gratin that I will have to share soon because it was a huge hit), and this pasta salad that I recently posted was on the menu too. Of course, I also did desserts. I made some of my biggest hits, snickers, somoa bars, and fluffernutter cookies to name a few. Then we’re still having our usual Friday dinner with friends today and tomorrow is yet another little shindig that I’ll be at least doing some baking for so I’ve got mucho to catch up on. Another reason for trying to keep it shorter today is that I feel like some of my posts have been a bit too long lately an I’m hoping you aren’t all getting sick of my jabbering. Speaking of which, I should probably shut up and get to the point here, this most epic ever chocolate explosion of a cake. One of my friends told me it was the coolest cake he thought he’d ever seen and all the kids were chomping at the bit to get into it. Here’s the breakdown of what it is. The cake is just a pretty basic, but really good and moist, dark chocolate cake recipe that you stuff with chocolate chips. Then the center layer is this extremely creamy “nutella” cheesecake layer. In between each layer you put a thin amount of the whipped “nutella” frosting and then you slather the whole cake with the rest. Then for decoration I dusted the top with cocoa powder, added homemade chocolate curls (super easy by the way), and then finished it off with a bunch of lovely pirouette cookies (which are optional). I kind of feel like I cheated with the pirouette cookies, but aren’t they gorgeous? I’m not sure why I feel that way, like who am I cheating on? I just know I have this misplaced guilt whenever I’m able to take cooking shortcuts and use the easy way. It must be because of how many things I’ve had to learn how to make at home and discovered that they are way better and so worth the effort. For the most part I’ve become a from-scratch cook and it feels wrong any other way, but occasionally there are things that you really can’t duplicate without industrial equipment and I think this is one of them. Okay, I said was going to make it shorter today and I’ve totally failed so I think I should shut up now and let you guys get to baking. Happy weekend and I hope it’s filled with chocolate! Is too much chocolate ever really a bad idea? This cake pushes that question to its limit but the real question is can you handle it?????