Coolest Birthday Cake, Superhero Style

This weekend I made the coolest birthday cake in the history of my baking career.  Ok, that's not hard to do since I  have only made two fancy birthday cakes ever.  Still I was pretty darn proud of myself.  When I got married I never planned on going wild and crazy with birthdays, cakes, and parties, but let's admit it, Pinterest has forever changed parties in general and made possible the coolest birthday cake.  Since it's just the husband and I, I get to make one cake a year.  Go big or go home, right?  

My husband is IMPOSSIBLE to shop for but this year things just all started falling into place and before I knew it, a good portion of his gifts were superhero themed.  The next step was to consult Pinterest for birthday cake ideas for men.  I didn't want something too childish but it had to top last year's Kit Kat Cake.  That's when I stumbled upon the recipe for a Hot Fudge Whopper Cake from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen.  It was a chocolate cake, with chocolate buttercream frosting and a chocolate ganache drizzled on top.  It just looked so fancy but yet something I could do.  Before closing my browser I decided to see what kinds of superhereos cakes were out there, just to see.  I took three different ideas and came up with my own creation.

It was definitely a labor of love.  Getting the supplies took a decent amount of time.  Then I had to cook all four layers of my cake, one layer at a time since I only had one 9inch pan.  It took two cake mixes.  You have to let the cakes cool completely before frosting.  I even put them in the fridge so that when I cut the top two layers of the cake it wouldn't crumble to pieces.

After they were adequately cooled I whipped up the chocolate frosting, slathering some in between each layer before frosting the outside.  Again, I put the cake back in the fridge for about an  hour to let the frosting set so the ganache wouldn't ruin everything.

Next I started cutting the wafer cookies to look like buildings to create my skyline.  I attached them using some of my extra frosting.

I followed the instructions from Confession of a Cookbook Queen for pouring the ganache and let it sit for a few minutes while I assembled my cake toppers.  Orignially the plan was to make the toppers in Photoshop and then go print them somewhere.  That wasn't exactly possible at 2 in the morning so it was time for Plan B and crossed fingers that I had enough colored ink in my printer.  The colors weren't exactly what was on my screen but I kind of like the effect that my almost inkless printer created.  The blue dots on the speech bubble were suppose to be red, the lightening was solid yellow with a red outline, and the POW had a solid blue background.  I think the printer had in mind an even better idea of what comic book cake toppers should look like.  I taped those to extra red and white paper straws and ZAP... you have a superhero/comic book cake that is sophisticated enough for all ages.

 

Even better is that the coolest birthday cake known to mankind was better tasting.  I thought it would be extremely rich but it was just the right amount of chocolate paired with a scoop of ice cream or glass of milk. 

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