Chocolate Wasted on Your 21st

One of my best friends recently turned 21 and for her birthday she asked if I would make her a cake. She is absolutely obsessed with chocolate, like more obsessed than anyone I've ever met, so I sent her a link I found on Pinterest with around 100 different cake recipes. I told her to pick one. Before sending it to her I already knew which one she was going to pick: Chocolate Wasted.
The recipe of the cake wasn’t exactly up to par, it was more about the looks than it was about the taste, so I just kind of winged it. I looked at the picture and decided instead to alter it and make it my own. I used a recipe from one of my favorite celebrity chefs, THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA, and made her basic chocolate cake. Since the cake from the original recipe is literally drowning in every single type of chocolate experience possible –chocolate candies, chocolate frosting, chocolate drizzle- I figured that the actual cake part should be a little milder in flavor.
After I baked the cake I brushed a mixture of Kahlua and vanilla extract over each layer to infuse and make it even moister. I then made a fluffy chocolate butter cream spiked with more Kahlua and an overdose of vanilla. I’m not exactly the frosting type but this stuff was lick-the-spoon worthy!
Then I frosted the cake and poured on the candies. I doused the thing in semi-sweet and dark chocolate chips. It literally looked like I dunked it in hardened chocolate. The top was overflowed with broken Hershey bar pieces, Rolos, Twix, and Kit Kat bars. And, as if that wasn’t chocolaty enough, I made a dark chocolate ganache and drizzled it all over the cake. It was a mess but a really indulgent one!
It’s the kind of cake I'm sure I will never make again or ever really want to cause it was so over the top, but it was for a really special friend, on her really special day, so I figured it was worth it.
By Katharine Probst