Twelve Layer Mocha Cake

Imagine a ferrero rocher in a cake. SO good!

I made this for my parent's 44th anniversary. A friend sent this recipe to me a couple of months ago and I finally had an occasion to try it. My parents generally prefer pastry-like cakes that aren't too sweet so I thought this would be perfect.

The cake is made of alternating layers of the following:

- coffee buttercream
- chocolate souffle
- mocha buttercream
- hazelnut meringue
- yellow cake

I won't lie...this cake took some time to make. I spread out the baking throughout the week to make it easier to manage. Each step was relatively simple, there was just a lot of steps! The BEST layer by far is the hazelnut meringue. It really gives the cake great flavour and texture. 

The buttercreams were amazing as well and I'll definitely be using the recipe for these on future cakes and cupcakes. Something to note... the recipe for the buttercream almost overflowed out of my 5qt. KitchenAid mixer! Had I not been panicking about it, I would have taken some pics to show the progress. Thankfully, it all stayed in the bowl, but just barely.

Once I assembled everything I stuck the cake in the fridge to firm up. I then trimmed all around the cake with a hot, sharp knife to get the sides even. 

I don't think I made the chocolate souffle layer properly...it was all gummy when I was mixing it and the egg whites didn't incorporate well when I was folding them in. There's a good chance I overbeat them. You couldn't really tell once it was all assembled though! 

The recipe states that this cake makes 8 servings....there is NO way that is possible. The pieces I cut would have allowed for about 12 servings but even those pieces were too big! This cake could easily feed 24 people or I suppose 12 very hungry people.

What I learned:

• how to make a meringue
• how to make a souffle (or more appropriately how not to make a souffle?)

What I would do differently:

• take a bit more time to make the sides straighter
• add chocolate curls as decoration on the top