Pinned it and Made it: Milk Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

In both my paper recipe book and my Pinterest boards, I have a plethora of cake recipes. I have one heck of a sweet tooth, but when it comes down to it, I think cake is really my favorite type of dessert so cake recipes always appeal to me. However, since I have the aforementioned killer sweet tooth, I can't make cake very often because I WILL EAT IT ALL. Seriously.

Therefore, I'm thrilled when an occasion pops up that actually gives me the excuse to pull out one of my many saved recipes and make a delicious cake. This occasion happened to be The Mister's birthday, so chocolate cake was the order of the day.

I've mentioned here before that although I love to cook and bake, I usually have to stick to boxed cake mixes because I live at high altitude and unless it's specifically written for such, normal cake recipes always yield disappointing results. In my recipe stash I found one for High Altitude Devil's Food Cake and had been patiently waiting for the chance to try it out. I made the cake and am sad to report that it did in fact fall a bit, which is what happens when I use normal cake recipes. It wasn't anything that couldn't be hidden by frosting however, so I decided to go ahead and use it.

Except--there was a slight disaster. Even though I buttered and floured the pans, both cakes stuck terribly and crumbled to pieces when I tried to get them out! I'm not sure if I left them to cool in the pans too long or what, but it was a catastrophe because we had friends coming over to help us celebrate in just a few hours! I ended up having to turn to Duncan Hines anyway for emergency assistance after all of that. I was able to salvage the scratch cake (which really tasted good, despite the lack of perfect rise) by making it into cake balls that we enjoyed later.

Even though the cake had some problems, there was nothing at all wrong with the frosting! I had Pinned this Milk Chocolate Buttercream Frosting recipe a few weeks ago and knew it was just the perfect complement to the cake! The frosting was easy to make and the only suggestion I'd make is to make a double batch. I made two 9-inch layers with my cake mix, then cut each of those in half to make four layers total. I initially made just one batch of frosting but it was only enough to spread between the layers, so I had to whip up another in order to frost the outside of the cake. I sprinkled on a few mini chocolate chips just to make it pretty. :)

The cake was delicious and the frosting was wonderfully light and creamy with a great chocolate taste. It was easy to work with and I will definitely be making it again! Too bad the next family birthday isn't until March. I'm going to have to adopt someone with a birthday in October because I just don't think I can wait that long!