I am fairly new to cake decorating and want to make a cake with chocolate italian meringue icing. Do I just add Cocoa to it or is there another way?

Also, what is a smash cake?

First-Welcome to Cake Central!! You will love it! There is a wealth of info in the old posts and you will always have someone willing to help with a question or idea you need!! With that said...I'm new to using IMBC but I think you can mix in some cooled melted chocolate. There may be some old posts on this-try a search! Also, a smash cake is the small cake given to the usually 1 year old birthday boy/girl to smash, eat or generally destroy!!

Yep ... add about 4-5 oz melted and cooled chocolate (use good chocolate for the best taste... and a dark chocolate will give you more flavour) after your IMBC is done ... a bit of vanilla with it is really good too, or a pinch of instant coffee or espresso really will bring out the chocolate flavour (and you won't taste the coffee if you only use a little ... 1/2 tsp approx)

I also use melted chocolate. I use about 6-8 oz because I like it to be more flavorful. I tried using cocoa and it just did not work well. So I stick to melted. Good luck, and I hope it works for you. Keli

I add 6 ounces of cooled melted chocolate and 1/2 cup of dark unsweetened cocoa.

Thank you all so much for your help, I can tell I am going to enjoy this site!!

The wedding cake I just posted tonight shows my buttercream colour. (I added a bit of Americolor Chocolate Brown to make it extra dark...but you can't tell because the cake is very cold in the photo, so it's paler. The buttercream I piped around each tier is warm though. They are the exact same batch of buttercream!!!)