If you love chocolate. This cake is for you. 

I made this cake last week to celebrate a friends birthday – she obviously loves chocolate too!

When you really need a chocolate fix – look no further! Instead of your typical buttercream or cream cheese based frosting (don’t get me wrong, I love those versions too!) try a ganache frosting. This frosting is rich, decadent, and complete ‘fudgy’ (can’t believe thats not a real word) goodness!

Ganache is simply cream, and chocolate married to each other with butter.

I heated up about 2 cups of heavy cream and 1 stick of butter (I used salted since I didn’t have unsalted on hand) until almost simmering. Then I poured the hot cream and butter over TWO packages of 16oz packages of chocolate chips and let sit a minute for the heat to do its thing. Then stir until all the chocolate is melted and beautifully velvety.

You can let this cool a bit and pour it as a glaze.

Or cool longer until the chocolate starts to set up and keep its shape. Then whip it until it because a frosting but be careful here. If your trying to achieve a perfectly smooth frosted cake – you’ll need to work quickly since as the frosting sits it’ll become more stiff.  Likewise, if your chocolate isn’t set up enough, then it’ll ‘melt’ off your cake.

*You can use whatever chocolate you like. Just remember the better the quality, the better the taste. For the cake above I used one package of milk chocolate chips and one package of semi-sweet chips.

**You can also add a tsp or 2 of expresso powder to help intensify the chocolate flavor. Add this to the chips before mixing in with the hot cream.

My oldest daughter is a true gamer along with her husband. So it seemed fitting that she would request a Mario-themed wedding cake.

Umm…sure, no problem. (?)

This cake was a true family affair. I got several of my other daughters to help make some of the characters ahead of time.

I couldn’t have done it without ’em.

Paige made the bride and groom. A PERFECT likeness me thinks…

So proud of this girl!

This is another quick cake I made to celebrate my Savannah’s 14th birthday. Don’t let the rosettes fool you, they were pretty simple to do. 

I rushed this one and even the imperfections don’t look too bad. The trick is to make sure your icing consistency is just right. The icing in this picture is almost too stiff  – as you can tell by the ‘broken’ spots created when piping. If I wasn’t in a hurry, I would have worked on softening the icing slightly just before piping.