Jessica's Cookery: Irish Cream-Chocolate Cake with Irish Whipped Cream

We have people over almost every Saturday for Magic the Gathering (a trading card game), and typically order pizza for dinner. Well, for St. Patty's Day, I wanted to do a themed night more friends might attend, so we had a general "board game" night and potluck for themed dishes! As you may already have realized...I LOVE baking! So I wanted to find a delicious cake recipe that held to the "Irish" theme. And found this one on Pinterest!

When it came time to actually baking it....I couldn't find my regular smaller cake pans for doing a layered cake. So I used my larger springform cake, which still turned out delicious, but I ended up with a LOT of whipped cream for the outside of the cake, since I couldn't do a layer filler (unless I sliced the cake in half). My whipped cream also didn't seem as thick as in the recipe's pictures, so I could have probably added more sugar. But still yummy! ^^

Original recipe here

Servings: 12
Calories per serving: 543

Cake Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup baking cocoa, unsweetened
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 large egg
2/3 cup oil
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup Irish Cream liquor*
1 cup black coffee

Frosting Ingredients:
1 pint heavy whipping cream
2/3 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup Irish Cream liquor
1/2 cup chopped milk chocolate (optional)

Cake:
Step 1: Preheat oven to 350°F.
Step 2: Grease springform cake pan.
Step 3: Beat the egg, oil, buttermilk, Irish Cream liquor, and coffee together.
Step 4: Mix dry ingredients together in separate bowl.
Step 5: Add dry mixture to liquid mixture.
Step 6: Beat for 2-3 minutes.
Step 7: Pour into greased cake pan.
Step 8: Bake for 35-50 minutes, or until a wooden stick comes out clean.**
Step 9: Cool completely. This takes about 3-4 hours, depending on your ambient temperature. My house is usually 66-72 degrees and it took close to 4 hours.

Frosting:
Step 1: Beat all ingredients together until cream holds it's shape (keeps peaks) and is the desired consistency.
Step 2: Frost cake.
Step 3: Sprinkle with chopped chocolate, if desired.

*I did not have Bailey's, but had another brand of Irish Cream liquor. I don't think it really matters. Also couldn't really taste it in the chocolate cake, so this might be unnecessary (or maybe just needs more?).

**Original recipe says to bake for 25-30 minutes, but since I was using a larger cake pan, I kept adding on time until a wooden chopstick came out clean. It ended up being about 48 minutes (but if you don't keep opening the oven like I did, your time should be shorter).

As a note, I typically do not sift anything even when a recipe calls for it. Because I'm lazy. It still turned out good without sifting. :)

Recipe time: Prep = 20 minutes, Cooking = 25 mintes. Cooling not estimated.
My cooking time: Prep = 30 minutes, Cooking = 48 minutes, 3-4 hours cooling.

The cake turned out delicious! I can definitely see where it'd be good to have a filling layer, because the cake is pretty dense. But still soooooo good! I piled on the whipped cream, so it was a bit much for some people (but not for me ^^), but everyone who had some enjoyed it. Some of us even had two pieces by the end of the night...... All-in-all, very good recipe!