My friend, Jaclyn, had her 21st birthday on Thursday. We had a party for her Friday night, so of course I had to make a cake to celebrate! I immediately went to one of my favorite blogs, Sweetapolita, and went through all of Rosie’s delicious cake recipes to find one that sounded delicious and not too intimidating. Jaclyn’s only request for her cake was that it be some kind of chocolate, so I immediately honed in on the Campfire Delight cake. Dark chocolate cake with malted chocolate frosting and toasted marshmallow frosting? With six layers? Oh goodness.
At first, I planned on just making a three layer cake because the thought of splitting a cake to make six layers sort of terrified me, but then I decided to go all out and have some fun with it. How can you go wrong with six layers of pure heaven (as everyone has called it)?
I couldn’t believe how tall it ended up; six layers sure is a lot of cake!
So that I could take pictures of the cake and slice into it before the party, I made a little cake for myself using mini tart pans in addition to the birthday cake. This was a lot of fun to do! I was able to test out my cake building skills on the one that didn’t matter so much (other than for the blog – which I suppose does make it a BIT important), so that was nice. Let’s pretend that I made the little cake early for the blog’s first birthday, which will be February 5; I’m sure I won’t be ready for cake again by then, so this’ll do just fine. 😉
I ended up doubling the recipe for the cake and making 1.5 times the amount of each frosting recipe to ensure that I had enough to make both cakes. With the scraps of cake that I cut to level off the layers and the bit of extra frosting I had left over, I mixed them together to make cake balls that I then dipped in chocolate and took along to the party. They were a huge hit, and so so easy to make!
When I was decorating the cakes, I decided to use the marshmallow frosting to pipe the writing, and that started out as a lovely idea, as you’ll notice from the ‘happy’ and ‘birthday.’ Since there are bits of toasted marshmallow in it, though, every once in a while the marshmallow would get stuck in the decorating tip and shoot out globs when I unknowingly squeezed harder to get it out. The writing was a little bit rough, but overall, not too bad.
I didn’t actually eat this piece when I first cut it since I’d be having some at the party that night, but Jaclyn ended up being down for the count before we actually got to sing Happy Birthday and cut the cake (turning 21 and having 4 shots in the span of 10 minutes will do that to you..). We ended up having birthday cake for breakfast, which was deliciously indulgent and a perfect cure for anybody that had a hangover from the night before.
Once we finally had the cake, it was all sorts of delicious. The toasted marshmallow frosting was nice and sweet, the malted chocolate frosting was light in texture and rich in flavor, and the cake was moist and wonderful tying all the flavors together. I ended up having another piece from the little cake after dinner, straight out of the fridge, and it was like having marshmallows sandwiched between cake that was covered in truffle filling. YUM.
And of course the kitty had to have a part in this. He was sprinting around the apartment the entire time I was taking pictures; he almost did a nosedive into the cake several times, but the cakes both managed to make it out unscathed, much to Tesla’s chagrin.
Recipe can be found at Sweetapolita, here. I followed it almost exactly (I used Lindt’s chili dark chocolate for the malted chocolate frosting in combination with regular dark chocolate for an extra little boost in flavor).
While you’re over there, check out Rosie’s asparagus cake! How amazing is that?!