The 'Mother' of All Cakes

In every person's life, there is the 'It Girl' when it comes to desserts... Of course it changes. One day we are obsessed with making chocolate chip cookies... and then the next, coconut cake is our thing.

My 'It Girl' at the moment is Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake. You may remember that I made this cake recently when I had leftover Guinness from making a Guinness beef stew -- which, by the way, is my 'It Girl' of comforting suppers. My sister had come around for the cake and loved it. It has become my idea, as well, of the ultimate chocolate cake. My sister's friend had seen that blog post, and a couple of weeks later, asked that I bake a cake for the baby shower she was throwing for my sister.

There's no use faffing about with something new, especially when the cake was going to feed about 14, so I went to my ultimate chocolate cake, and one that I knew that at least two people would love. :)

But this time, since it was a party after all, I couldn't leave it unadorned. I am incapable of making decorations, so I knew I would have to buy those. I admit, I could have gone the kitsch route with getting some baby blocks in pink or something, but I wanted to keep it simple. I love flowers, and since this will be a Spring baby, I got some lovely daffodil sugar flowers. I also got peach colored sugar roses, not sure if I would use those instead. In the end, I decided to dot the middle of the cake with the rose with the daffodils forming the gorgeous crown around. The icing, of course, was the cream cheese icing in the same recipe for the cake.


All the girls loved it! I was really happy it turned out well and that it survived the almost two hour trip to Long Island. Which really is the reason it is the 'It Girl' of cakes. Delicious, can be made in advance, and portable. That's a triple threat, methinks.