I felt the pressure with this cake. I'm moving,* and I decided I wanted to make the fine men and women of TheVine a cake as a going away present. Immediately, I felt under siege. I'm prone to giving my cakes superlative titles, they're all MAJOR and SERIOUS and BIG, but what if this cake didn't measure up? What if it fell flat? What if something horrible happened with the icing, or the filling, or what if the cake fell apart when I tried to split it?

The cake anxiety was intense, but I needn't have worried. Despite some alarming moments, I now have my new favourite chocolate cake recipe, and best of all my new favourite buttercream recipe, but I will get to that.

It all started with this recipe for Mexican hot chocolate cupcakes that I've had bookmarked for months. I originally intended to just adapt this from the cupcake recipe, then I realised it, first, involved a plain old yellow cake, which bored me, and, second, their meringue buttercream called for 450g of chocolate. I'd rather put the extra chocolate in the cake and find a less tooth-aching icing, so the Mexican chocolate pudding could stay but everything else went.

For the cake I turned to my expensive subscription to Cooks Illustrated, which is so very worth it, in my opinion. The Cooks Illustrated people are just so precise, so humourless, and I adore it. This chocolate layer cake (recipe is behind paywall) is the winner after the Cooks Illustrated crew tested 130 recipes - 130! - and it was great, fluffy yet tender and deeply chocolate. It will be my go-to chocolate layer cake for a very long time.

But the best, and weirdest, part was the cinnamon buttercream, also found through La Martha. A typical buttercream is made by beating butter with a metric shitload of icing sugar; the icing sugar sweetens, but it mostly stiffens the icing, giving it a pipeable texture that will firm up with standing. Other, more fiddly buttercreams use a meringue base for stability, but they are, trust me, ridiculously hard to make. This icing cooks up a kind of creme anglaise base, thickened with flour, then beats in the butter. At first it looked far too gloopy and viscous to ever stiffen, so I gave it a spell in the fridge and felt sorry for myself. After it cooled completely, however, it beat up into the fluffiest, smoothest, most perfect buttercream I've ever made. Seriously and for reals. And with only 3/4 cup of sugar! That's mind-blowing! It was delicate, creamy and not overly sweet. Bookmark it for reals.

So crank the Waka Flocka Flame, and let's make the shit out of an incredible cake.

*but don't you fret, due to the POWER OF THE INTERNET! we will continue to share cooking adventures.

Mexican hot chocolate cake
Of mixed heritage. Serves 10-12

For cake:
165g butter, softened and cut into pieces
1 3/4 cup flour
100g chocolate, chopped (pro tip - DON'T use cooking chocolate, it's full of vegetable fats and tastes gross. Buy a block you'd eat - I typically buy Lindt from the supermarket, as it is reliable and relatively inexpensive)
1/4 cup cocoa (Dutch-processed, by preference)
1/2 cup hot water
1 3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp bicarb
1 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk (my supermarket was out, so I combined 1 cup of regular milk with 1 tbsp of cider vinegar and let it stand until I needed it)
2 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
2 egg yolks

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Spray two 8" cake tins generously with oil, sprinkle with flour, knock out excess, then set aside.

Bring a couple of centimetres of water to a simmer in a small pan. Stir together cocoa, hot water and chocolate in a small heatproof bowl and set over the pan. Stir together until smooth, then stir in 1/2 cup of sugar and stir until glossy and smooth. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Whisk together the flour, salt and bicarb in a medium bowl. Combine the buttermilk and vanilla in a jug. Put the eggs and egg yolks into your large whiskin' bowl. Break out the electric mixer and beat on low for about 10 second until combined. Add remaining 1 1/4 cup of sugar, increase heat to high and beat until the eggs have tripled in volume and a ribbon of egg will sit on top of the rest for a few seconds before sinking - it's the same principle as beating eggs for a genoise.  Add the chocolate mixture, and beat on medium-low until combined. Add the butter, a piece at a time, beating with the mixture for 10-20 seconds after each addition. Switch to a spatula, then fold in 1/3 of the flour, followed by half the buttermilk, then 1/3 flour, then buttermilk, then flour.

Divide between prepared pans, and bake for 25-30 minutes until the cakes have pulled away from the edges of a pan and a toothpick comes out with just a few moist crumbs clinging. Cool in a rack in pans for about 20 minutes, then remove from pans and cool completely.

While baking, go ahead and make the pudding filling.

For pudding:
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1 3/4 tbsp cornflour
1/2 cup cream
2 egg yolks
1 cup milk
85 g Mexican chocolate, broken into pieces (1 tablet; if you can't find Mexican chocolate, use regular dark chocolate plus 3 tbsp sugar plus 2 tsp cinnamon plus a fat pinch of nutmeg)
50g butter

Set a sieve over a medium bowl. Whisk together cocoa and cornflour in a small bowl. In a small jug, thoroughly combine the cream, milk and egg yolks. Add about 1/4 cup of cream and egg mixture to the cocoa and cornflour, and whisk to form a smooth paste. Put the rest of the cream and egg mixture into a small saucepan along with the chocolate over medium-high heat. Scrape the cocoa paste into the saucepan and stir continuously with a spatula, paying particular attention to the corners of the pan, until it boils and thickens, around 5-10 minutes.

Strain immediately into a medium bowl, then beat in the butter. Press a piece of glad wrap on to the surface of the pudding to prevent a skin forming, and refrigerate immediately.

Give the chocolate pudding a good 40 minute head start before you start the icing. By that time, the cakes should already be cooling. Once you've removed the cakes from the pan and they feel only barely warm, start the icing.

For buttercream:
250g butter, softened but still firm, cut into pieces
3/4 cup sugar
3 tbsp flour
3/4 cup milk
3 tbsp cream
2 tsp cinnamon
Fat pinch of nutmeg
1 tsp vanilla

Combine cream, milk and vanilla in a small jug. Whisk together flour, sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon in a small bowl. Add 1/4 cup of milk mixture to the cinnamon mixture and whisk to form a smooth paste. Add the rest of the milk mixture to a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Scrape the cinnamon paste into the milk mixture and stir with a spatula to combine, and stir continuously until it boils and thickens, around 5-10 minutes. Transfer immediately to a large bowl.

With an electric mixer, beat on medium speed until cool, around 15 minutes. You don't want to skimp on this step - the buttercream will firm up faster the cooler everything is. Beat in the butter a piece at a time, then beat on high until thick, voluminous and pale. If it seems to be taking a long time give the bowl a spell in the fridge to cool down.

Now, to assemble! Take four strips of baking paper and arrange them in a square on your cake board or plate. Take the first cake layer, and use a large serrated knife to split it in half. You can, of course, just make this a two layer cake if you're nervous about splitting the layer, but all it takes is a steady hand and patience.  Centre the bottom layer in the middle of the baking paper square, then use a spoon to spread 1/3 cup of pudding filling over the layer, leaving a 1cm border around the edges to prevent too much oozing. Continue with the remaining layers.

Use an offset spatula to apply a thin layer of buttercream all over the cake. This is the crumb coat - it will stick any errant crumbs to the cake and prevent them from ruining the finish of your cake. Let it stand for 10 minutes, then spackle over the remaining buttercream. Think Kardashian levels of coverage. I had some buttercream left over, so I used a large star tip top pipe stars all over the top of the cake, then sprinkled it with silver cachous for sparkle. You may decorate it however you want. Pull out the strips of baking paper to reveal a perfectly clean plate. Feel accomplished.