Chocolate Dulce de Leche Cake
Chocolate and dulce de leche. I don’t even have to say much more to convince anyone this is a great idea, but I’ll get a little more specific: Three layers of dark chocolate cake loaded with thick Argentine dulce de leche that permeates what had been an extra springy cake, then covered, as everything should be, with creamy bittersweet chocolate ganache.
You shouldn’t need any other reason to make this, but I came up with this decadent idea because today is my friend Kat’s birthday. If you read He Cooks She Cooks fairly regularly, you know her name comes up often. While I was in Missouri, I cooked dinner with or for her nearly every night this summer and many times during the school year.
Now we’re a hemisphere apart, but I wanted to make something to celebrate her birthday.
No, she can’t eat any of this and that’s sad, but I hope she appreciates the thought. I’m not much of a baker because I’m no good at following recipes and I don’t have much patience. This is the first three layer cake I’ve ever made — my family makes a lot of bundt and sheet cakes because we’d rather get to eating cake than wait around for multiple tiers to cool so they can be properly frosted. But for this cake, I cooked each layer individually (I have a small oven and only one cake pan), waited for them to cool, and tried my best to be neat with the ganache.
Since you can’t taste the cake, Kat, I hope the effort means something to you. And trust me, the cake is as amazing as you are imagining it right now. Happy birthday!
See also: Dulce de Leche Ice Cream