(Adapted) Devil's Food Cake with Hazelnut Crunch

pretty proud of myself for this one...

I've never attempted a 3 layer cake before. Always seemed too intimidating. Well, a friend's birthday calls for a special effort. So here goes....

I adapted Gourmet's version of this Devil's Food Cake with Hazelnut Crunch

A couple notes about the recipe:

For the hazelnut crunch:

1. I didn't use hazelnuts (I'm a grad student, not a fancy-pants lawyer or something, who can afford hazelnuts??? I used toasted almonds instead)

2. I didn't use Nutella, instead I used peanut butter and added 1/2 oz square of unsweetened baking chocolate 

For the frosting:

3. I didn't use upscale Scharffen Berger chocolate like the recipe calls for. I used plain ole' semi-sweet chocolate chips and milk chocolate chips, again, see fancy pants comment above.

For the assembly:

4. I didn't cut off the domed parts of each layer to create even layers when I assembled the cake. Excuse me but I worked hard for this cake and I really don't care enough about how it looks to sacrifice any part of it!

Now that I got that off my chest, go to the store, stock up on butter and chocolate and get baking. enjoy...