Happy Birthday, Dear Creature

My brother's birthday was earlier this month, and I wanted him to have a special day. Therefore, I spent 2 hours making him a cake. Just the cake part, not any frosting or anything. Seriously, this is one of the most time-intensive cakes I have ever made. But boy is it worth it. I will now bestow upon you all the secret recipe:

Death By Chocolate Cake
1 4-oz bar of chocolate (or 3/4 cup baking cocoa mixed with 3 tbsp melted butter) 1/2 c water
1 c butter (use the real stuff, it tastes better)
2 c sugar
4 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla
2 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 c buttermilk or prepared hot cocoa
1/2 tsp salt
4 egg whites

Melt chocolate with water in a pan and set aside.

Cream butter and sugar. Add egg yolks. Mix in chocolate and vanilla.

Sift flour and soda together. Add dry ingredients alternately with the buttermilk to the chocolate mixture. Mix until smooth.

In a new bowl, beat the egg whites with the salt to very stiff peaks. Fold in to chocolate mixture. Pour into 3 9-inch round pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Wait until cake has cooled completely, then frost.

That's right, this is a THREE LAYER cake. I dirty every bowl in the house when I make this, but it is so moist, so chocolaty.....YUMMY! You will definitely need a glass of milk to finish one piece. Also, if you are using store-bought frosting to frost, be sure to use VERY LITTLE (keep it thin) frosting between the layers or you won't have enough frosting for the outside of this giant cake. I found this recipe in a magazine years ago. It was named something else and called for buttermilk or coffee. I modified the recipe a bit and found that the addition of hot chocolate made this truly Death By Chocolate. What a way to go!

When it came time to frost it I wanted to give the cake a theme that my brother would identify with. He watches a lot of anime, and one of his favorite shows is One Piece. (My husband tells me it's about a pirate that wears a straw hat and wants to beat everyone to some fantastic treasure. Whatever.) So I Googled for pictures and found their pirate flag:
After THREE HOURS of frosting and decorating, I had made this:
Not bad, eh? I must really love him, or something. I especially liked the tie-in on the whole Death By Chocolate theme.

Nathan and I ran the cake to my parents' house the night before so my brother wouldn't see it. On the way we stopped for some food, and the gal in the drive-thru saw Nathan holding the cake.

"That's an AWESOME cake! Is it for someone's 40th birthday?"

"Uh . . . no, he's 24."

"And you're already teasing him about dying?"

We tried to explain the whole anime thing, but who really gets it besides geeks? (Special geeks, I mean. Of course, I am a geek, but not that kind of geek.)

The next day we got together for Easter and Steven's birthday. When we had asked him a few days before about what kind of cake he wanted, he had been a little vague, so my mom told him he would only get one cupcake.

Strangely enough, he had wolfed it down before we had a chance to bring out the real cake.

Hey Steven! You can only have One Piece! Get it? One Piece! Heh? Heh?