My Birthday Cake: Rooting for the Underdog

(Note: Did you notice that I didn't post the decorating with... collections post yesterday? I checked the schedule, and it turns out that I was a week ahead anyway. Oops. So I spent the day recovering from Easter, and I'll post it on its originally scheduled date of May 2. Hope that's okay!)

Earlier this month, I asked for help deciding what type of birthday cake to bake. Well, the poll is closed and the cake was baked last week.

Here's the incredibly important, ridiculously official poll's results:

And... here's my cake.

Let me explain.

 I have a thing for the underdog in any game. So I sort of squished the winner and the loser together and made a chocolate raspberry cake topped with ganache, like the mousse cake. Oy. I felt so bad for the poor chocolate raspberry cake. It was like walking into the pound and seeing rows of sad little kittens and puppies, except imagine they were all squished into one giant chocolate-flavored sad baby animal.

This is why I don't like making decisions!

As for the cake itself, it was good. It wasn't phenomenal in my opinion (other people really seemed to like it a whole bunch though), but that might have had more to do with my overwhelming poll-induced guilt and the fact that I'm actually not that big a fan of cakes in general. (I do love carrot cake but I think that has more to do with the cream cheese frosting and less to do with the produce in the cake). Maybe I need therapy?

I used a boxed Devil's Food cake mix to make the cake, because I'm all about cutting corners. I cut it into four layers, and topped it with a mixture of a raspberry filling and ganache. Then I covered the finished cake with more ganache. Finally I added a few raspberries on top for cuteness factor, and in a desperate last ditch effort to lessen my guilt. It didn't work.

I used the raspberry filling recipe from Our Life in the Kitchen.

And the quick microwave ganache recipe from Our Best Bites.

Don't hate me, okay?