Mint Chocolate Chip Cake - cooking recipe

Ingredients

Cake
9 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 cup strong coffee
1/2 cup milk
Frosting
1 1/2 cups butter
4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
3 teaspoons peppermint extract (start with 2 t and adjust to taste)
150 g dark chocolate or 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, very finely chopped by hand
green food coloring
sugar ice cream cone (optional)

Preparation

Cake: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and line the base of two 9-inch cake pans with waxed paper.
Sift together the cocoa, flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar about 5 minutes until smooth and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until fully combined.
Combine the coffee and milk. Stir half of the flour mixture into the butter mixture. Stir in all of the coffee and milk. Add remaining flour mixture, mix until smooth.
Pour batter in prepared pans. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until cake tester comes out clean. Watch closely, chocolate cakes dry out quickly with overbaking. Cool in pans about 5 minutes. Remove cake layers from pans and place on wire racks to cool completely.
Frosting: Beat butter until fluffy and smooth. Add sifted powdered sugar, beating until combined. Add peppermint extract to taste and green food coloring as desired. Stir in chocolate pieces. Frost cake layers.
To decorate as suggested, I carefully broke pieces off sugar cones until they were about 3 1/2 inches and, using my cookie scoop, made small scoops of frosting for mini \"ice cream\" cones to top cake. Serve at room temperature.