I start every post these days with: I know, I haven’t posted in so long. It’s true, I don’t really know where to go with the blog. Should I find a way to keep up with it, if only to have it as a resource for my family (who actually uses it a lot)? I don’t know.

What I do know is that when it’s my parents’ birthday and there’s a whole ton of delicious sushi and a brand new cake recipe, I for one am going to want to remember it—and find that cake recipe easily. So here goes.

As you may remember my parents were born a day apart, in August. Which means a celebration on Cape Cod can never not happen.

This year our dear Drew took the weekend off from his latest business venture to make, oh, 150-or-so pieces of fresh, homemade sushi for us all with help from whomever wasn’t wrangling kids at any given time. My mom hates to not help, so even though it was her birthday weekend she made an asian salad and an edamame salad. I threw in some baked tofu with miso sauce and my sister and I took on a brand new cake recipe.

Dinner was crazy, to say the least. We had little kids who were totally wound up, tweens who were sleepy and bored (but kind of wanted to make frosting), torrential rain and a ton of folks in the kitchen all day. But it was ok, it was exhausting but good.

Ok maybe I need an extra day off.

But anyhow. For all you chocolate and Nutella lovers out there, here’s the cake recipe:

• Chocolate Nutella Layer Cake •
from sweetapolita

Ingredients
For the Cake:
2 1/4 cups 285 grams all-purpose flour
2 1/3 cups 470 grams superfine sugar
3/4 cup 90 grams dark Dutch-process cocoa powder 
2 1/2 teaspoons 12 grams baking soda
2 teaspoons 10 grams baking powder
1 teaspoon 8 grams salt
1 1/4 cups 300 ml buttermilk
3/4 cup 180 ml brewed coffee or espresso
2/3 cup 160 ml vegetable oil
3 eggs room temperature
1 tablespoon 15 ml pure vanilla extract

For the Frosting:
4 1/2 cups 565 grams confectioners’ sugar
1 1/2 cups 340 grams unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup 280 grams Nutella (or other hazelnut spread)
3/4 cup 180 ml full-fat sour cream
11 ounces 330 grams best-quality dark chocolate, melted and cooled slightly
1 tablespoon 15 ml pure vanilla extract
Pinch of salt

Instructions
For the Cake:
Preheat oven to 350° F. Prepare three 7-inch round cake pans with nonstick spray and parchment rounds.
In bowl of electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, sift all dry ingredients, including sugar. Combine eggs, buttermilk, coffee, oil and vanilla in a measuring cup and beat lightly with a fork.
Add milk mixture to the dry ingredients mix for 1 minute on medium speed (you may need the plastic splash-guard that comes with mixer). Divide batter evenly among prepared pans–each pan should contain about 600 grams of batter.
Bake the first 2 layers for 20 minutes and rotate pans in oven. Continue to bake until toothpick or skewer comes almost clean (a few crumbs), about 5 more minutes. Cool on wire racks for 20 minutes. Repeat with remaining layer, and then gently invert onto racks until completely cool.

For the Chocolate Frosting:
Put all of the ingredients in a food processor, and pulse until smooth and glossy, about 1 minute. The frosting will be very soft. Refrigerate the frosting until it thickens slightly, about 15 minutes.

Assembly of the Best-Ever Chocolate & Nutella Layer Cake:
Sweetapolita’s assembly can be found here. We just did a traditional quick icing. A blob on the cake plate and a blob spread between each layer. Then we gently frosted the outside of the cake with the remaining icing and refrigerated until ready to eat (it was in the 80s so refrigeration was necessary)