Scott's Lincoln Log Cake

I know several of you have been waiting patiently to see the spectacular cake we made for Scott's birthday, so here it is:

I just hate making this cake, and I have vowed never to make it again. After following the complicated directions precisely, I burned the tips of my fingers taking the cake out of the oven. When I turned it out onto the clean kitchen towel, things started to go terribly, terribly wrong.

My first thought--well, never mind; you don't need to know my first thought. My almost-first-thought was that I could salvage it and make a chocolate cake & whipped cream trifle. Except the stupid cake didn't break into chunks, it broke into a paper-thin top half and a paper-thin bottom half.

So there I stood, blowing on my singed fingers and looking at my utterly trashed kitchen. (This recipe--as I may have mentioned--is complicated and there was a lot of whip this in that bowl, then whip this in another bowl, then fold together in a third bowl.) I just could not motivate myself to clean it all up, then re-destroy it by starting to make lasagna.

We ended up going out for Italian and getting cheesecake.