Chocolate Cake

My latest baking mission: to find a recipe for a fluffy chocolate cake, as well as a frosting that taste good and pipe well.

It doesn't sound that hard, a good chocolate cake and frosting recipe. Most bakers will probably have a favorite stashed away, and I know this because I've been asking around.

Unfortunately, none of them seemed to work. After a whole series of failed chocolate cakes [read: dense and flat and unappetizing], the mere mention of chocolate cake makes me queasy

But, I am determined to get this done. So today, I set out to bake a chocolate cake incorporated with the entire arsenal of rising agents I have at my command. Meaning, inside this cake, I used baking soda, baking powder, as well as separately beaten egg whites, all in an attempt to create THE fluffy chocolate cake

The result? Not bad, considering. It still wasn't as tall as I had hoped, but I'm beginning to suspect that this legendary tall and fluffy cake I'm chasing after doesn't exist, and I should just be content with this fluffy-but-not-so-tall cake.

As for the frosting, what I have here is a coffee Swiss meringue buttercream. While delicious, it is nowhere near stiff enough to hold delicate pipings like flowers and leaves. Seems to me only shortening can achieve the consistency that I want, but due to my [irrational?] disgust for shortening, I'm forever stuck with unattractive crude looking cakes. So if anyone has a good recipe for a frosting stiff enough to pipe without using shortening, give it to me and you'll have my eternal gratitude