devil's food cake with whipped cream frosting

We have a lot of birthdays in our family -- from May - August, we have one a month (or more, if we extended outside of our house) -- so we eat a lot of cake. It's a bit of a challenge to come up with distinctive and unique cake choices (and we all have our preferences). For example, usually I have a chocolate on chocolate cake for my birthday. Then I try to make something creative (but not too adventurous) for P.'s birthday. The boys usually opt for something somewhat conservative.

This year, I tried to come up with something extra-tasty for P.'s birthday, but not too decadent since it's on the heels of the ultra-chocolatey Almost-Fudge Gâteau that we had for my birthday. After extensive research, I found this cake on the Cook's Illustrated website. I particularly liked that it had a whipped cream-based frosting since rich chocolatey cakes are sometimes pushed over the richness edge by overly sweet, overly heavy buttercream or cream cheese frostings (yes, I know -- it sounds crazy but it's true!).

I served it at P.'s birthday dinner -- everyone present loved it, but P. in particular said he enjoyed dessert even more than the dinner itself (and he's not a sweets guy). He had his slice alongside a scoop of my homemade coffee ice cream.

I myself thought it was moist and chocolatey and all the things you want in a good chocolate cake. This cake blew the King Arthur Flour Devil's Food Cake (that I made a couple months back) away. Sadly, it didn't last very long -- I barely had the chance to take a picture before it was gone!