Hazelnut Crunch Chocolate Cake

I'm beginning to enjoy making cakes alot these days. It's something that I've always wanted to go into, but never did found the time or reason to.
A whole slew of birthday's this december gave me good reason to begin working on cake decorating techniques.
It's alot different from your bake-in-a-pan goodies like brownies and crumbles.
There's the fragile layers of sponge cake to deal with, making sure the cuts are satisfactory, filling the cake evenly, and glazing or covering it properly.

Here's what I've learnt so far:
Off-set spatulas are the second best tools (The first are your hands).
Go for longs ones. They help with lifting fragile layers of cake. I've learnt never to lift the layers with your hands. Gravity makes short work of the thin rounds, and the sides break off when you attempt to lift them up.
Off-set spatulas make short work of glazing a cake too.

Cutting even layers of cake gets easier with practise. Or you could use a nifty cake layer cutting thing. It's a frame that's 10 inches wide, with a metal wire across it that is height adjustable.

The freezer is your best friend. It makes glazes set quickly, so that you can transfer the cake to a cake board.

Overfilling a cake causes the filling to erupt around the sides, breaking through the glaze. A bumpy bus ride dosen't help also.

Now, I just need to work on covering the sides properly. Especially with whipped cream.

I give you, the Hazlelnut Crunch Chocolate Cake.

Hazelnut Crunch Chocolate Cake

Enjoy.