Chocolate Cake + Easy White Chocolate Trees

YAYYYY, IT'S MONDAY!  It is a good Monday because Christmas is only ONE week away!  We celebrated Christmas with Tall Tan Man's family this past weekend and I was in charge of the dessert.  Please don't ask me to make real food... ;)  I made a similar chocolate cake for Mack's first birthday, and loved how it looked but not how it tasted.  Box Cake = Barf #jk #kindof
I went on the hunt for the perfect chocolate cake recipe and Pinterest told me this was it.  This Add A Pinch recipe was SO YUMMY and I only made 2 minor changes.  First off, I didn't own espresso powder nor did I want to spend $6 on it.  I bought $2 instant espresso and it seemed to work just fine.  Next up was the cake pan situation.  The recipe called for 2 - 9 inch cake pans.  I used 2 cake pans and my oven 'bout caught on fire from the overflowing pans...  I'm thinking my cake pans are not the same depth as hers... but I am not sure. I remade the cake and used 3 pans and it turned out perfect!  

I wanted to spice up the cake so I added cinnamon candies and white chocolate pretzel trees.  This was perfect for me because I am not great at icing cakes and it distracted people from my sloppy icing.  #neverbeenaperfectionist

White chocolate pretzel trees are SO simple to make.  All you do is put melted chocolate in a sandwich bag, cut a very small hole in one corner, and make trees over the pretzels.  I recommend you make your trees as narrow as possible or they will start to look real wonky.  

Try not to worry about your trees all looking the same.  Think about it, are real trees ever the same?  :)

Y'all this cake was no joke.  It was SO GOOD.  I wish I would of bought ice cream to go with it and still had some left.  One last tip!!!  The pretzels will soften on the cake after about 24 hours.  You can make the cake a day ahead of time but just wait until the day of to add your pretzel trees.  
 I hope y'all have a great week!  I have a couple more Christmas posts planned this week so come on back!  :)