Andes Mint Cake for Swee's Birthday

On Wednesday, it was my colleague Swee's birthday, and of course, we had to celebrate with cake!  I knew from previously making a cake for Swee's dad that Swee liked choc mint flavours, so I was determined to make a choc mint cake for her birthday.    I settled on this very elegant looking Andes Mint Cake from Bird on A Cake.  Umm, mine got lost in translation somewhat and looked more like The Incredible Hulk than elegant, but it did the job.

Here is what each of the three chocolate sponge cake layers looked like:

The little patches are where the Andes mint chips (that I luckily had stashed away from my US trips) melted into the cake.  The chocolate flavour is all from cocoa, so the cake isn't overly rich.

The layers are spread with a peppermint flavoured buttercream:

I used half of what the recipe says - I think Australian tastes on cake to icing ratio are a little different to the US.  My cake stack leaned a little once I had finished putting on the buttercream, but I decided to stick with it.

Finally, a ganache is poured on top - this is where The Hulk factor came in, as my ganache had thickened a little too much and not so much poured as was pushed, lava style, over the top of the cake:

Andes mint chocolate is not sold here (at least, not outside speciality stores), so I decorated the top of my cake with a crushed Mint Crisp instead of chopped Andes mint bars.

Here's a look inside the finished cake:

It tasted pretty good from where I was sitting! And the birthday girl loved it.

Here we all are, posing with the cake: 

Happy birthday Swee.