Carrie's Choco cake o' DOOM!!!

Experiment 090227

My friend Carrie had some pretty definite ideas on what she wanted for her birthday cake:

I have considered my impending birfyday cake...and I want...
*drumroll*
A cake that is so chocolate-y it oozes chocolate-y goodness.
I want a chocolate cake so chocolate-y that there's no possible way we can accuse Sam of ruining chocolate.
I want to see through time *bwahahahahahaha!!!* (and throw all the diabetics into coma's of dark brown delight!)

And hence the "Choco cake o' DOOM!!!" was born in a ritual involving four pounds of chocolate, a perfectly innocent double-layer Dream Whip chocolate cake frosted with a double batch of chocolate butter-cream, and about an hour and a half of careful candy-bar and chocolate chip placement.

Liz's World of Swirl Birthday Cake

Experiment: 090220

My friend Liz requested a yellow cake with chocolate butter-cream frosting for her birthday this year and left the theme and design entirely up to me. Since I had free reign I decided to go for something a little "prettier" than normal and made a Wilton method World of Swirl cake. For future reference I would like to note that this cake took most of four batches of chocolate butter-cream and ended up with so much frosting on it that the cake layers inside actually fell and ended up looking like half layers when we cut it. Another item to note is that the "Bakery Crafts" brand Sparkler Candles I used have a very clear warning on the back instructing that "TO EXTINGUISH, PUT CANDLES IN WATER".... It would have helped a lot if I had read that in advance. On the plus side I got a pretty amusing video sequence out of it.