Back in 2003

Last week, I set out to make a birthday cake.  A rich, delicious, new cake that I had never made before. And to do so, I had to go back in time to 2003 with Martha Stewart Living Annual Recipes. 

There, on page 87, I found the Belgian Chocolate birthday cake.  The recipe called for ground toasted hazelnuts and a stunning amount of chocolate.

 
And I made it.  Without the chocolate shavings and candied hazelnuts, though, because I just don't have time for that.  This cake was amazing: unbelievably moist and rich. The experience was unsettling at first, because the ground hazelnuts threw me off...the cake tasted like hazelnuts, so I kept expecting to find one, but I never bit into a hazelnut.  But by the second or third bite, I was hooked.  Yum!
 

I wish I could link to the recipe, but I just can't find it on MarthaStewart.com.  And reprinting it without permission would only lead to me getting jailed/sued/kidnapped/etc., for which I am so not prepared, so you're going to have to find this recipe on your own. Sorry!

The cake was so rich and dense that I had to eat it with vanilla ice cream to lighten it up, that's how good it was.  Warm cake with vanilla ice cream is amazing...the world needs more of it, quite frankly. 

 
Whose birthday was this for, you ask? I'm glad you did...this totally awesome birthday cake was for a totally awesome person: TMI's very own Handy Freddy!  Today is his birthday, by the way.
 

 
Happy birthday, Freddy! And thanks for all that you do in the TMI household.