Ganache Greatness

As I stated on my last post, I made my first "fancy" cake with ganache, and tried the Chocolate Cake from Whisk Kid's blog (my new favorite blog by the way).  It was soooo good.  I couldn't use her icing due to the whole "raw egg" factor and certain health issues some of my co-workers are having right now.  So, I used the "Quick Vanilla Buttercream" recipe that I found on the Food Network site and it turned out really well.  I also used Whisk Kid's Peanut Butter Ganache recipe, but added 1/2 cup more peanut butter because I wanted the PB taste to sing a little more.  Her picture of the cake was just gorgeous, but I'm still starting out and needing a little (as in a whole heck of a lot) more practice to get to her level.  Her ganache called for dark chocolate, so I used Hershey's Dark Chocolate Chips.  I had some left over and didn't have time to make the chocolate curls so I threw those on top.... don't judge me!
The cake was insanely delicious and I will make it for all other chocolate cakes in the future.   I really enjoyed the ganache, too.  It got the wheels in my head turning about how to make it mocha flavored next time. 
Here's the pictures.... and yes.... the cake is a little lopsided and not iced perfectly but it was crazy late and "Biggie Smalls" was having a rough night so I didn't have time to purty' it up like I wanted to.  

 My co-workers are still fighting for this very last piece of cake.  I wont lie, it makes me feel good!  Heeh heeh!  I know the last 2 pics are a little gross, and not "blog beautiful" but I thought it was hilarious how these 7 women tore this cake up!  The last picture shows the ganache in the middle above the icing layer.  The recipe made A TON of ganache and I wished I had used more, but I was afraid of it squishing out and being gross. 
Check out Whisk Kid's blog for the recipes and also see her insanely gorgeous rainbow cake that is the next task on my list.