Birthday Cake

It’s wise to have in your repertoire a pretty failsafe chocolate cake. I call this birthday cake because that’s what it seems to get made for mostly. It’s plain but good, and the chocolate ganache with which it’s draped is gleamingly spectacular and ideal for bearing birthday candles. With this recipe, you don’t need to be dextrous or artistic – and any other form of icing for a birthday cake requires you be both. But if you want to make the sort of cake you actually write Happy Birthday on