A Little Bit of All Right

For my penultimate Cake Slice Bakers bake for 2019, I chose the Chocolate Kiev Cake. This cake consists of layers of chocolate hazelnut meringue and chocolate sponge cake with chocolate mascarpone buttercream between. In addition, each sponge cake layer is brushed with a chocolate syrup - a runny chocolate ganache. After layering everything, the cake is covered with buttercream, topped with chocolate ganache, and decorated with chocolate meringue kisses and chopped hazelnuts. Chocolate upon chocolate upon chocolate. What's not to love! The cake was a bit of a mess as I was assembling it. The first problem was the same one I've had in the past - splitting the cake layers.  The layers were a little thin to begin with, and splitting them created a few uneven spots.  Then came the meringue layers.  The instructions say to mark an 8-inch circle on parchment paper, pipe meringue inside the circle and bake.  Then when you layer with the cake, you're to trim off any