Bingo!  I'm going to go ahead and throw modesty aside for a minute and say that today's cake, well, it rocks.  Not only does it look super cute (my 5 year old son said it looked like the cake was wearing a ruffly skirt) but when we dug in we found it to taste delicious too!

As much as I love chocolate, I typically shy away from chocolate cake.  It's a bit fussy and can turn out crumbly, dry, bland, you name it.  I know that I've been all about finding great "from scratch" recipes lately but I recently found this recipe for a doctored cake mix and decided to give it a try.  I was a bit skeptical but that started melting away as soon as I pulled the cake layers out of the oven.  They baked up so nice and even.  Plus, I totally made up for using a box mix by making homemade whipped chocolate ganache for the filling and homemade buttercream.







Stacked, filled and ready for crumb coat.

The crumb coat is so important when working with decorated cakes.  It really holds everything together nicely.

And here it is finished.  Cute, huh?  I rather like the sweet little ruffles. 

Next time I'll try it with some color.  Maybe ombre style.  Yep, definitely.