Ultimate Chocolate Cake (Tuxedo Cake)

This past weekend was Cake4Kids' 3rd annual CakeOff4Kids event.  Because a few of the bakers that signed up to bake in the contest dropped out at the last minute, I volunteered to bake a cake for the event.  The category I was "entered" in was the Ultimate Chocolate category.  I went with my go to chocolate cake baked with chopped Andes Mints, filling it with ganache, peppermint butter cream frosting, and more crushed Andes Mints.

I searched high and low for the Andes baking chips that I have used often in my Best Brownies with no such luck.  So, I enlisted the husband to unwrap two boxes of Andes Mints and I manually chopped them to bits.

The contest required two cakes, one for the judges and one for the guests.  For the judging cake, I wanted to make it taste as "chocolately" as possible.  So, in addition to filling the cake with ganache and peppermint butter cream frosting, I coated the outside of the cake in the same.  For the tasting cake, I went with the classic ganache pour with all of the leftover ganache.

I didn't place in my category but I had a small sample of the cake and this combination definitely jumped up my list of favorite cakes.  I can't wait to replicate it for the Holidays.