Birthday Cake Reprise: Chocolate and Kahlua

This cake was made for a multi-purpose party: two birthdays and one graduation. There is nothing new about this cake recipe-wise. The yellow cake is taken from the spectacular Pecan Praline Bourbon Cake, and the frosting is none other than my mother's chocolate cream cheese frosting.

But the combination of the two elements, along with a generous dousing of Kahlua, can only be described as synergistic: a level of deliciousness that exceeds the sum of the individual components.

Layers of Kahlua-soaked cake.

Cake being swaddled in a thick layer of creamy frosting.

At this point I could have been finished...but it looked so plain. So I tried to do some piping, then some stencil work, both of which failed miserably and had to be wiped off. I ended up coating the top with a sprinkling of black cocoa for contrast. The taste of the cake is reminiscent of a chocolate tiramisu, so the cocoa was very appropriate as well as classy.

Ready to eat!

As the birthday boy would say, "Nom nom nom!"