Neopolitan Birthday Cake

I  love making cakes! And I don't always have an excuse to make one. Because otherwise then I'd have to eat it myself and that just wouldn't be a good idea.  Or would it...??

So I love it when my husband's birthday comes so I can make a cake! And experiment on him and my family members! Hey, that's what they are for, right?!

I've been wanting to try a Neapolitan cake. But replace the traditional chocolate layer with a coffee flavored one and then dousing the whole cake in a rich chocolate ganache so that chocolate would still be incorporated in the cake.

Well the week of hubby's birthday was a crazy busy week. So late the night before his party I made the cakes. Everything was going so well....I found this new recipe on Pinterest that was fantastic! I had baked the vanilla and coffee flavored layers. I had the strawberry layer with 6 cupcakes, to use up the rest of the batter, in the oven. The cupcakes we finished but the cake needed a few more minutes. By this time, it was well after midnight and I was running out of steam fast. I check the cake once more and it needed just about 5 more minutes. It looked marvelous. I decided, in a horribly bad decision making moment, NOT to set the timer and that I'd just check the time on my computer that I was on while waiting for the cakes to finish....well, 5 minutes turning into almost 5 HOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not good.

I completely fell asleep! And funny thing is I kept smelling burnt strawberry cake while I was sleeping and asking myself if I'd taken it out of the oven! Well, then hubby woke up to the smell of charred cake and asked if I was done baking-of course now it's 5 am! This naturally jolted me out of sleep in a panic realizing what happened and I ran to the oven to remove the large, hockey puck strawberry cake.

What a sad sight!! I was not happy. Especially because strawberry is my husbands favorite flavor and now it was ruined!  But I was too tired to do anything at that moment so I went to bed, now dreaming of how to fix this as I had used up all my eggs and strawberries and there wasn't even enough time to make another one.

So, I had to use the coffee and vanilla layers and between each layer I did a thin coat of chocolate ganache and then fresh strawberries-that I ran to the store to get that morning!-and then covered the whole thing in ganache! Yum.

I really like the way it came out. Of course, with most homemade cakes, they tend to be a bit dense but I found if you do not refrigerate the cake, but keep it at room temperate it is not so "hard/dense from the cold.

I would like to try this again WITH the strawberry layer though! At least we got the try the cupcakes, which were good. I will definitely use this recipe again!
Lesson learned: ALWAYS set the timer!!!

                                                                             



Sorry, this was a cellphone picture!