Chocolate Chocolate Cake - Mike's Birthday

Brad loves chocolate cake.. boxed chocolate cake, topped with the chocolate frosting you buy in a jar. He prefers Duncan Hines to anything (although he wouldn't be able to tell you that, I learned through trial and error). So when he gifted me a stand mixer, I made it my personal mission to find a chocolate cake and frosting recipe that would taste like boxed but be homemade (and therefore more healthy). FAIL FAIL FAIL!!! Cake disasters ensued. He wouldn't eat anything I made him. It was very sad to have to give away so much cake, or stuff my face with it out of misery. He tried to stay nice but he's pretty fierce when it comes to his midwestern palate.

Slowly but surely I found the right cake recipe. I actually got it on recipezaar.com. Brad loved it, saying "the bread part is good..." and you can guess what's next... "but the frosting is disgusting!" I had to top it with the frosting from the jar if I was going to get him to eat any. Frosting recipe after frosting recipe I continued to lose against his taste buds. So one day I googled "duncan hines chocolate frosting recipe." It pulled up your average chocolate buttercream frosting, but somehow looked more promising with all the reviews. I tried it atop my chocolate cake, and believe it or not, BRAD ATE IT! He still claims it isn't good, but "edible." I mean, there are several edible things I don't wolf down the way he eats this cake.. like grapefruit, shrimp heads, underwear... so it must be pretty good!
Last month when I visited Willful in New Mexico, I shared my choco cake recipe with her. We made adjustments for high altitude and they came out only slightly cavey. Then I guess she made some of her own the other week, and they were absolutely cavernous! I was so sad because I felt like my recipe set her up for failure.
Then it was Mike's birthday last weekend, and he requested my chocolate cake, having sampled it the last time I made it. He'd been waiting a month for this cake; he honestly loved it and said it was the best chocolate cake he'd ever had and couldn't wait to have it again.
I prepared everything as usual, put the cakes in the oven, and halfway through spied on them. Hmm... they had grown tumors! A perfectly round, about 6" circle, filled with lumps and bumps, formed in the middle of each cake. Weird, I thought. I took them out on time, pleased to see the tumors disappeared, and marveled each cake's breast-like nature:

I was a little scared, because I thought maybe I had done something terribly wrong and ruined Mike's cake. Then I thought of how I failed poor Willful by giving her a junk recipe. No time to waste, I ran some errands and showered while the cakes cooled. I split each layer in half with my nifty cake string thing. When I separated each layer, I noticed holes all over the inside of the cake. Whoah no!!!! I got really nervous, then rationed nobody would notice because at least the holes were on the inside. I spread each layer with my chocolate frosting, and finished the cake off with basic buttercream decorations and writing:

With all the hidden peculiarities with this cake, I really worried what was going to happen when I served it. Surprisingly, as I sliced the cake, it nearly bounced off the plate it was so springy and moist! Everybody delighted at how moist the cake was. I chuckled to myself because right around that time, I noticed the frosting between the layers had creeped into the tiny sink holes I noticed when I split the cake. I basically made a poke cake on accident! I'm not trying to brag here, but it was honestly one of the best cakes I've ever made. The frosting tends to be super sugary but I could hardly notice because the majority of it soaked into the "bread."
I'm not sure what this means for the future of my recipe, or what it means for Willful. I think there is something wrong with it and it might not be the best for high altitude. But it certainly is a great recipe for a moist chocolate cake!