Charles' Birthday Cake

I must preface this post by saying that it is all Susan's fault, gotta find someone to place the blame on, right? ;) So Susan had this link to sign up for free birthday ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery, okay, so I shouldn't have signed up for it cause it got me to look at their site. And for those of you who know me you know I love to re-create desserts from pictures I see. It is such fun. So I showed Charles the page of their signature cakes and he picked one he wanted me to try for his birthday. I made it for fellowship dinner and it's a good thing I did because it turned out enormous!

Here is the one he picked, it's called Peanut ButterPlayground™. It is layers of chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream (I did chocolate peanut butter ice cream) with crushed peanut butter cups covered in chocolate ganache.


Here is our finished product ~ I used 8" cake pans and well, it turned out to be about 7"or 8" high! Oops. ;)

A better shot of the inside layers...

For those of you who are wondering, yes, it did taste gooooood. I know those of you who had some have already attested to that.

And for those of you who I know are wondering, yes, I did make it almost completely organic, say 90%?! I used regular Nestle chocolate chips for my ganache. I can already see the request list for dessert the next time we have our big dinner get together with the O's and such! :)

And a pic of my sweetie who turned *35*, wow! With his beloved mastiff. :) Yes, he was being silly in this pic but the one that he looked good in the dog messed up by moving all over the place. Oh well.