Ultimate chocolate birthday cake

So my birthday was almost two months ago, but I did some baking for it and since I haven't posted any baking recipes for a while now, I thought I'd add some more. 

Naturally my birthday was a bit different this year, spread out over several days with small groups of people coming to visit. Instead of my usual three cakes, I made two; an apple crumble by Yvette and what the recipe called 'the ultimate chocolate birthday cake'. This involved some washing up in the middle, as it requires three bowls and then some more. Also, it involves making a chocolate ganache, something I've seen on the Great British Bake-Off lots of times but hadn't actually made myself. It all came out pretty neat, in a massive amount of chocolate and frosting. I advise you to make the slices small; it's not as bad as the Icelandic devil's food cake, but it's pretty close.

Ingredients
For the cake:

100 g milk chocolate (in pieces)

200 g butter

200 g creme fraiche

200 g flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

1 tablespoon sault

4 eggs

200 g sugar

For the ganache:

400 g dark chocolate (in pieces)

250 ml cream

50 g icing sugar

Preheat the oven at 165 C.

Line your (24 cm) tin with baking parchment and butter.

Put the milk chocolate, butter and creme fraiche in a bowl a top a pan of simmering water. When everything is melted, take the bowl off the pan, stir to combine and leave to cool until lukewarm.

Put the flour, baking powder, cocoa, and salt in one bowl and mix together,

In another bowl, mix the eggs and sugar until they are a smooth, pale mixture.

The three bowl set; dry ingredients, egg mixture and chocolate.

Gently stir the molten chocolate mixture into the egg mixture. When it is all combined, add the flour mixture and combine again.

Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for about 50 minutes. Leave to cool in the tin for at least 20 minutes, then turn it out and cool completely. You can do this the day before; store the cake wrapped up in the fridge.

Next, make the ganache. Put the dark chocolate and cream in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water (sounds familiar?). When everything is combined, take off the pan and leave to cool completely.

Finally, add the icing sugar and whisk until combined. You can make the ganache one day earlier too, just put it in the fridge until you are going to finish the cake.

To assemble, cut the cake halfway. Spoon one third of the ganache on the bottom half and spread all over, careful not to let it run off the sides. Put the top half back on and spread the rest of the ganache over the top. You can decorate this in any way you like; nuts, chocolate swirls, et cetera. I chose to keep mine plain, partly because it is such a heavy cake already and partly because it was just so shiny.

Pretty pretty cake with an attempt at swirls on top.

It was rich and tasty, and making ganache is so much easier than it sounds! Not sure if this was the 'ultimate' birthday cake, but it was a pretty good one!