179/365 - Beauty is not just skin, er...frosting deep.

It seems the going rage for cakes these days is fondant....extravagant, brightly colored creations that far elude my skill level.  I did give some thought to trying it out this past weekend, but I figured I wouldn't want to run the risk of reneging on my promise to bring a cake to the baby shower for my friend Jessi.  Besides, I'm not all that fond of how fondant tastes.  {hee hee}

Choosing what I was going to do turned out to be an elaborate process in and of itself.  I spent far too many hours looking at YouTube videos on cake decorating techniques online these past few days.  There are entire blogs devoted to cake decorating.  I had no idea.

I ultimately decided to focus on the cake itself, because inner decadent goodness will forgive any outside flaws as far as I'm concerned.  I chose homemade dark chocolate cake...four layers separated by chocolate raspberry ganache.  True confession: the raspberries were thrown in after failed attempts to smooth out my lumpy ganache.  At least now the lumps have some purpose, and besides, how can you go wrong with Ghiradelli chocolate, raspberries and heavy whipping cream?

The cake baking/layering process took up a good portion of my day yesterday.  I thought I would be frosting this cake late into the night, but thanks to some expert videos I found and a facebook poll determining the merits of ruffles vs. roses, the outside turned out to be a piece of cake.  (Ba dum, chhhhhh!)

Seriously, folks, I know I impressed a lot of people, but the frosting was the easy part:

I, for one, can't wait to see how it tastes...