Waymon's 23rd Birthday Cake- Chocolate Layer Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting & Cookies n Creme Cookies!

             I love making my husband his birthday cakes. He doesn't want much for his birthday, ever. So I figured if I bake him a cake he'd have a little something special for his day. He loves the simple things in food. He loves cookies and cream, but isn't a huge fan over sweets. He's more of a savory type of guy.  I was inspired by pinterest to create a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting surrounded by cookies and cream cookies. The cake I saw on pinterest was a cookie dough cake with chocolate chip cookies surrounding the cake. It was so beautiful, but I didn't want to die of a heart attack making it/eating it.  So I came up with this little beauty right here. It was the first time I've ever made a layered cake and it was so easy that I didn't know why I was scared to make it in the first place. The cake was sweet, but not overly sweet. It was perfect.... especially because he actually enjoyed his cake. 

birthday boy :) 

Chocolate Layer Cake from Hershey's

Ingredients:

·         1 & 3/4 cups flour

·         2 cups sugar

·         3/4 cup cocoa powder

·         1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

·         1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

·         1 teaspoon salt

·         2 eggs

·         1 cup milk

·         1/2 cup vegetable oil

·         2 teaspoons vanilla

·         1 cup boiling water

Directions:

1. Bake cookies from the box. J Pretty self explanatory there.

 2. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Coat three 8-inch cake pans with nonstick spray. Line the bottoms of the pans with parchment paper. Spray each pan again and coat with a thin layer of flour.

3. In a large bowl, combine the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla, and mix until everything is thoroughly incorporated. Stir in the boiling water; the batter will be very thin.

4. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared cake pans. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of each layer comes out clean. Cool the layers in the pans for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

5. Wrap each layer in plastic wrap and refrigerate for several hours or overnight. Make the cream cheese filling and chocolate butter cream (see recipes below). When you're ready to assemble the cake, remove the layers from the refrigerator. If needed, level each layer with a serrated knife or cake leveler.

6.  Place the bottom layer on a cake plate. Evenly spread about ¼ to ½ a cup of the cream cheese filling over the cake, put more filling in the center of the cake. You want to do the latter so that when you put the next layer on the icing will be even. Top with the second layer and repeat. Finally, top with the third layer.

7. Take the rest of the frosting and change its color with food coloring. I chose red for Waymon’s favorite color. Frost the rest of the cake with this frosting. Not worrying too much of how perfect the sides of the cake are because you’ll cover it with the cookies afterwards.

8. Take the cookies you previously baked and place them around the cake.

9. Shave some chocolate over the cake for a nice effect. I wanted to put chocolate chips on top, but I didn’t want it too sweet.

Cream Cheese Frosting

·   1 cup cream cheese

·         3/4 cup butter

·         1/2 tablespoon vanilla

·         6 cups powdered sugar

1. Beat the cream cheese and butter with an electric mixer at medium speed for about one minute.

2. Add the vanilla and beat one minute more.

3.  Reduce the mixing speed to low, and add the powdered sugar about 1/2 cup at a time.

4. Once the sugar is completely incorporated, beat at medium speed for about two minutes or until fluffy.