Cake or Death?

We had a charity raffle and cake sale at work yesterday. I decided to try my hand at a receipt I hadn't done before as I usually do a ginger cake but fancied a change. I plumped for a chocolate cake and then hit the internet looking for the perfect one. Strangely putting terms like "best chocolate cake" into Google returns more than one result, which is a logical impossibility but there we are. I finally settled on this receipt, which claimed the lofty status of "Ultimate Chocolate Cake". Well I could hardly refuse, now could I? Here are a few photos of the construction:

This is the pan I melted my own bodyweight in dark chocolate in.

The cake as it appeared, naked straight from the oven. This was getting on for midnight so I had to let it cool overnight before making the ganache after breakfast on the following morning. It ended up looking like this:

I ended up, after having licked the spoon I used to mix the ganache, like this:

At 32 years of age you'd have thought I'd be able to eat without smearing my food all around my mouth wouldn't you? You'd be wrong.