TWD Rewind: Black and White Chocolate Cake

This week I got an order for a birthday cake. I was told that the birthday "boy" (he's an adult, by the way), likes "wet" cakes and the combination of chocolate and strawberries. I wasn't sure what he meant by "wet" - did he mean moist, or truly wet, like cakes soaked in a liquid? I decided to consult BFMHTY, and I found what I needed. Plus, it's a TWD rewind. Yay! I figured since this has three layers of filling, it would be plenty "wet".

The party was yesterday, so on Friday I set about making the cake. First was the buttermilk layers. Those were quick and easy to do. Then came the bittersweet chocolate pastry cream. A little bit of egg stuck to the bottom, but other than that, smooth sailing. The white chocolate whipped cream? Um, not so much. You start off by melting white chocolate and cream together. Took a while, but worked out fine. Then you beat the rest of the cream until it "holds soft peaks". I, not being and expert on whipped cream, beat it until it had... um... stiffer-than-soft peaks. Then when I added the chocolate, it had been beaten too much. It became butter. This had never happened to me before, so I didn't know what was going on. I called my mom for advice - she told me what had happened and that I would have to start again. This resulted in some frustration and another trip to the store. Oh well. It worked out fine the second time.

Next came the assembly of the cake. I read on some other blogs that some people didn't have enough whipped cream to fill one layer and ice it. When I looked at mine, I found this was true, so I did three layers of the bittersweet chocolate and just covered the cake in the white. In order to get in the strawberry idea, I put some on top of the cake. I was going to put some in the layers of cream, too, but forgot. Oh well. I attempted to make chocolate curls for the top, but ended up with shavings. It looked pretty anyways. I heard back that everybody liked the cake and the birthday boy was happy. If you want to try it for yourself, you can buy the book (link above) or find it here. Please make it. Please. And let me know how it turned out. Enjoy!