Cookies and Cream Cake

I was looking around for a cake for my birthday dinner, and settled on this one. It looked good, and the chocolate frosting gets rave reviews. Annie had a few others that I was deciding between... I will definitely be visiting her site for ideas again.Cookies and Cream Cake
Makes an 9" cake, original cake source: Hershey's

For the cake:

2 c. sugar

1 ¾ c. all-purpose flour

¾ c. cocoa powder

1 ½ tsp. baking powder

1 ½ tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

2 eggs

1 c. milk (I used skim)

½ c. vegetable oil (I used 1/2 c. applesauce)

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 c. boiling water

For the filling:

1 ¼ c. heavy cream

1/8 c. confectioners’ sugar

¼ tsp. pure vanilla extract

10 chocolate sandwich cookies, chopped

(NOTE: I didn't go to this much trouble. I used a 12 oz. container Free Cool Whip, and about 1/2 cup of crushed chocolate sandwich cookies leftover from my Oreo pie. Mix the two together. Delish. And easy. And trust me, the cake is rich enough, no extra sugar required.)

For the frosting:

1 recipe Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Frosting

DIRECTIONS:

Cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans.

2. Stir together the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans.

3. Bake 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely.

Filling:

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, combine the heavy cream, confectioners’ sugar and vanilla. Beat on low speed until all sugar is incorporated; increase speed to high and whisk until stiff peaks form. Gently fold in chopped cookie pieces with a rubber spatula. (Or just mix cookie pieces with a container of cool whip. Sometimes I just take the easy way out.)

* Now make the frosting recipe.

To assemble to the cake:

(NOTE: For some reason, I thought this needed to be a 4 layer cake instead of a 2 layer cake, so I cut each layer in half first. I still assembled as stated below, but with two extra layers as you can see in the pictures.)

1. Place one cake layer on a cardboard cake circle. (I didn't have one, hence the cookie sheet covered with foil.) Pipe a ring of the chocolate frosting around the outside edge of the cake. (I just cut the corner off a Ziploc bag.) Fill the area inside the ring of frosting with a thick layer of the cookies and cream mixture. Place the second cake layer on top. (Repeat for layers 3 and 4 if necessary.)

2. Frost the sides of the cake layers with chocolate frosting. Pipe a decorative border of the chocolate frosting on top of the cake. Fill the area inside this border with a thick layer of the cookies and cream mixture. Garnish with extra chocolate sandwich cookies and whipped cream if desired. (I did the top a little different. You can do whatever you want, it will all taste the same.)

REVIEW:
SO. GOOD. The chocolate frosting is heaven, and the cookies and cream helps lighten up the cake. I should have put some more cookies and cream between the layers - really heap it in there. I don't know if I loved the cake recipe. It was chocolatey and moist, but it was pretty dense. It worked well for this, but it isn't going to be my go-to chocolate cake recipe. None-the-less, all of this together worked. Be sure to serve with some ice cream or milk, you need it to wash this cake down!