Chocolate Cake with Caramel Filling

I have some dear friends. Lets call them the “Silver family”. The mother of this family, lets call her “Cathy”, was having a birthday today. Lets say she was turning “35” (and by “35”, I mean not 35).
I wasn’t entirely sure what to make initially. I remembered once to a birthday cake of my own that I had made. (Yes, I make my own birthday cakes. Don’t judge me.) It was a “Celebration Chocolate Cake” with “Chocolate Mouse” frosting from an old Hershey’s cook book. That would be fun to make again.
But simply putting chocolate on chocolate: over-used. Hmmm. What could I add?
Caramel of course.
I have an amazing caramel recipe. Life changing, even. I’ve made it so many times that I think I could make it in my sleep. (One time I burned the sugar while making it at a family gathering at Christmas. There may have been tears.) It is relatively simple to make, but you have to baby it and keep an eye on it. I’ll post the recipe later.
The frosting is a different matter. Basically, it’s chocolate whipping cream stabilized with gelatin. The recipe calls for sugar, coca, and vanilla as flavoring for the whipping cream. I also add just a hint of instant coffee to enhance the chocolate. Thank you, Ina Garten.
Assembling is a dream. Stack cake, add ring of chocolate mouse, fill with caramel, stack cake, repeat. I save as much of the frosting as possible to frost the outside of the cake.
As you can tell from the picture with the cutout, the top layer was a bit lopsided. Apparently while I was applying the chocolate mouse I pushed the top cake and off set it. You wouldn’t believe how much that changed the flavor. (I’m lying about that last part of course. The flavor was AMAZING.)
Intentionally I left the cake un-embellished. The flavor speaks for itself.
And if I might add, I think Cathy Silver was quite pleased with her cake. Happy Birthday, indeed!