My son is still keeping track of his half birthdays, and wanted to celebrate turning 7 1/2  🙂 He requested a candy cake with all his favorite chocolate candy.  It was really fun decorating with candy, and I loved seeing his face when he noticed his new favorite cookies and cream Hershey’s bar! This is a 6 inch cake with four layers of chocolate mud cake.  It is so yummy and dense, almost like a fudgy brownie.  The trick is that I put melted chocolate right in the cake batter! There are three kinds of fillings in this cake- raspberry, blackberry, and ganache.  It is frosted with vanilla bean Swiss meringue buttercream and has a chocolate glaze drip.

My son is still the only one I know who celebrates his half birthday.  I know several people laughed when I invited them over for cake and ice cream to celebrate his half birthday.  Honestly I don’t mind another excuse to make a cake for him! But the truth is, he didn’t even eat a slice of cake- he ate the candy off the cake and that was it! He rarely eats my cakes anymore …sniff sniff…. because I make so many, I think he is tired of them.  He only eats cake if I bake a small 3 inch cake just for him, chocolate,  right out of the oven, with no frosting or anything.  He also likes his hamburgers plain with no ketchup or mustard, his sandwiches with no mayo 🙂  He likes the simple things in life lol.  I will remember this about you during this time of your life Dylan 🙂

This chocolate ganache drip was a pain in the butt! The buttercream was either too cold and the ganache too hot (the ganache literally slipped down the cake and ended up in a big mess at the bottom). Or the cake was room temperature and the ganache was too cool (the ganache would not drip at all and would form a big blob at the top of the cake).  I have never had a problem with dripping ganache before! But this was so frustrating! What worked for me was making a whole new recipe of chocolate glaze, making sure it was really hot, and that the cake was just cold enough to stop the drips from dripping down the whole side of the cake.  You can see some of my other drip cakes here, here, here, and here.  I actually did a drip on both the top and bottom of this cake.  I don’t know if you can see it because the candy on the bottom is sort of covering the drip.  I achieved this look by dripping the chocolate ganache down the cake, then flipping the cake over and dripping it down on the top. Then I decided which drip I liked best and made that the top! Pretty easy.  It also helped that this cake was very sturdy.  I would never try this with any kind of whipped cream frosted cake lol.

Below are the links to the recipes for this cake

Chocolate Mud Cake

Raspberry filling

blackberry ganache filling

chocolate ganache

vanilla bean Swiss meringue butter cream

Enjoy!