by partysugar

When I was little, one of my favorite dishes was my dad's firehouse birthday cake. He was a fire chief, and like most firefighters, a great cook. His dessert specialty was a boxed chocolate cake that he jazzed up with a whipped cream cheese frosting and syrupy cherry topping; it was called firehouse birthday cake. Since he retired, I haven't had firehouse birthday cake, so with the original recipe in hand, I recently set out to bake an updated version of the dessert. Instead of a boxed mix, I made a devil's food chocolate cake from scratch and I replaced the canned cherries with fresh bing cherries. The resulting cake has all the delicious flavors I remember, but with a more sophisticated appearance. It's a rich and wonderful pairing of chocolate and cherries, cut with smooth, fluffy, thick cream. If you've got a birthday coming up, I highly recommend this cake. Here's the recipe.