Walking in a winter wonder...cake

I don't often think about my baking in food blogging terms, with words like luscious swoops of snowy whipped cream that make you think of the magic of Christmas, and the time of year when you believe that every wish you ever make can come true as long as there's a light snow falling and the twinkles of Christmas lights on a woodsy fir tree... and words along those lines. But I baked this cake this weekend for a holiday party and that is exactly what I thought. It is like a Christmas candy land cake. And I totally forgot to have a bite of it at the party. I did check in on it at one point to see how it was doing (i.e., see whether people were gobbling it up and providing me with validation) and the top two layers had sort of slid off the bottom two layers (whipped cream frosting does not provide a lot of structural support). I believe my reading public will be proud to know that instead of trying to prop the cake back up again and looking like a crazy person, I just went and had another glass of wine.

The recipe: Devil's Food Cake with Peppermint Frosting
The only thing I did differently was to ditch the marshmallow frosting, because it is a colossal pain, and doubled the white chocolate cream frosting instead. I don't regret that change for a minute. And my arms thank me for not hand whisking egg whites for 15 minutes.