So I saw this episode of one of Paula Deen’s shows on food network and she made this chocolate layer cake with a cheesecake filling.  Well, that just looked too good.  So I made one the other day.  I went with a Duncan Hines dark chocolate cake mix and made two 9″ round layers out of it.  Then I made one of my “famous” cheescakes but without the crust.  So it was just the filling.  By the way, it turns out that it’s much more difficult to depan a cheesecake that has no crust.

Anyway, I cut the top hump off of the bottom layer and iced it and then tried to put the cheesecake filling on top.  That’s another thing I learned: It’s easier to put a regular cake on top of a cheesecake layer than it is to pick up a cheesecake layer and put it on a regular cake layer.  I should have iced the cheesecake filling and then put the cake layer on top of it and then flipped the whole assembly.  Anyway, I iced the cheesecake layer and put the other chocolate layer on top of it and iced the whole thing.  It took two cans of store bought icing to do the whole thing.  Here are some pictures:

Chocolate layer cake with cheesecake

Chocolate layer cake with cheesecake slice

 So I learned a couple things from this endeavour:

1. This is a very rich cake.  Small, thin slices are enough.
2. While both the chocolate cake and the cheesecake are really good by themselves, they don’t necessarily go together.  It’s still a good cake, but there needs to be something to bind the two parts together flavor-wise.

I think the next time I try something like this, I will go with a lemon cake in the bottom layer. Then put some lemon zest in the cheesecake, which should help tie the two parts together.  Then go with a strawberry cake for the top because strawberry is a good topping for cheesecake.