Everybody loves fall.

 It's beautiful out. You know why?

Fall.

    I mean, who doesn't love fall? Crazy people. Only crazy people don't unconditionally love the majestic beatitude that is fall. You don't want to be a crazy person, do you? No pressure.


Today I made the mistake of waking up and going on pinterest, where i found this:

And it's incredible.

It's chocolate cake with pumpkin cheesecake in the middle. For the record, i'm not the biggest pumpkin person. In fact, i'm not a pumpkin person at all! I'm just a regular person. But what i'm trying to say here, is that aside from the occasional pumpkin pie,  I don't really like pumpkin flavored items. But you know what guys? It's fucking fall. And i'm not a crazy person, so i guess i'm just going to have to man up and make this delicious, wonderfully delightful cake. Also why you don't get out of bed hungry and go on pinterest when you have an unscheduled day ahead of you. I think that's a lesson we can all take home.

Also every once in a while you feel like eating like a fat kid being indulgent. Anyway i got pumped! and was like, "Ok, let's do this!" And then i high-fived myself.


You gotta start with the chocolate cake. That little gem has to cool before you can begin construction.

 Also you can get this recipe here if you love pumpkin things/fall/being a copycat/can't come over my house for a piece.

When i put these in the oven they were super watery and i was like, "ugh..." and Nanc was like, "No way those are gonna cook right" and the recipe also called for a cup of hot water, which i thought was really weird but anyway:


Step 2: Cheesecake.

Which is actually just cream cheese city with some sugar skyscrapers.  ...well other stuff too (like canned pumpkin and eggs), but this is the heart of it.

The recipe actually calls for pumpkin pie spice, but when i went to the store i was like, "6 dollars?! Who am i, Rockefeller?" so i found a recipe and made it because we have every spice in the world. 

 Except all spice. Isn't it ironic, don't you think? Which oBviously you do unless you don't like Alanis Morissette, in which case you're and idiot:

Anyway we didn't need allspice, so none of this matters.

Measure out the ingredients... Pappas style! We'll need a spoonful of laughter of ground cinnamon:

2 hints of patience, and a morsel of a i don't have a 1/8th of a teaspoon. 

When i was living in San Francisco i went with my friend to this vegan raw food restaurant for reasons i can't remember, but obviously stemming from some desire to inflict punishment upon our selves... anyway instead of calling the dish the fo-food it was horribly attempting to imitate,  they called it a feeling. Then when you went to order you were supposed to say, "I'm feeling..." and then what ever the name of your dish was. So of course we were both like, "I'm not doing that" and of course there was some exorbitantly flamboyant lady in the corner who declared she was "seeking satisfaction" in the overly dramatic voice of a person who feels they were born for the theatre, but are not. Anyway i took the lesser of two evils and was like, "I'll have the enthusiastic" which was actually the name of my dish and not at all what i was feeling, but apparently was acceptable enough for the waitress, who then turned to my friend and was like, "And how are you feeling?" So my friend who would not have any of this and was like, "I'll have the enchiladas." "So you're feeling passionately." The waitress said, nodding knowingly in the soft voice of someone who feels like they really understand you and are making a connection. And my friends was like:

"I'll have the enchiladas."

Spices are pretty.
 

And our cheesecake is complete.
Which is perfect because now it's time for the old swap-a-ru!

perfectly in focus. Wait for it...

Boom! Perfect. Watery my butt, they look delightful. And you know what? Chicken taco time.

The special sauce is sour cream and salsa mixed together. Ingenious. Add a little Tabasco if you're spicy, which oBviously i am.

Here's a picture of Harvey in the wilderness:

Okay, now i think it's time to make our frosting.

Put a ton of fat in a bowl:

Aka a stick and a half of butter and a cup of canola oil. Then add a ton of powdered sugar and the rest of the pumpkin spice. The pumpkin spice recipe makes about two teaspoons, which is conveniently what you need for this recipe and obviously these two unrelated sites are working together in some kind of underground pumpkin movement. They love fall.

So at this point I taste it, and it's really really sweet, and needs more flavor. Also the recipe calls for two more cups! of powdered sugar at this stage which, no. So i'm like, okay, the cheesequake cheesecake's cooking, i'll go upstairs and start writing. So half an hour later i come down and Nanc is like, "That frosting is terrible. You need to do something about it. Definitely more butter." So i'm like, "I totally agree." and i go to open the door of the oven and she's like "Stop! you'll hurt the cheesecake!" Which apparently cheesecakes are super sensitive. I didn't know. I do know the story of my friend(pictured above)'s mom yelling at his friends to "walk softly, i've got a cheesecake in the oven!" Which just made her sound a little nutty, but apparently she was right on. Shout out to Nanc on this one. So i leave (carefully not to disturb the cheesecake) and i come back about half an hour later at which point Nanc was nice enough to turn off the oven and set the timer for the cheesecake to cool for an hour. She then reminded me again that the frosting was terrible, which is probably because letting it sit will do nothing.

This cake is going to be gigantic. Nanc and i putz-ed around with the frosting a little and decided it needed more spice, so a dash of kindness, a few more hints of patience, and a drizzle of vanilla later and we still have a super sweet, but well flavored icing. If you make this recipe i recommend slowly adding the powdered sugar and tasting after every trough of sensibility (half of a cup). Seriously you'll need less then half the recommended amount. Which also means we would have had enough powdered sugar in house and i'm down $2.19. Whatever.

When every thing cools make your ganache.

Which is basically just heated heavy cream and chocolate chips.

 It get's spread on both sides of the cheesecake layer

Time to frost!

My cousin taught me this cool trick where you keep dipping your knife in hot water and it makes it easier to smooth the cake. Anyway time to pipe!

 ...which is not my specialty. 

Man there's so much stuff in this cake. If only it had hot fudge...

Now that's what i call a cake!

 Just look at those three brown pools... of longing. Slightly ghetto, but overall delicious.

Beautiful. Man nothing says fall like pumpkin cheesecake sandwiched in between two chocolate cakes with a chocolate ganache spread, butter sugar frosting and some hot fudge. Nothing like a good old artery clog to bring out the fall in all of us.

The icing is sweet, but the cake itself really isn't, so they complement each other pretty well. Nanc told me to "read up" on Swiss butter cream for next time.

Anyway, this cake is delicious. No regrets.