How can I generate Perlin noise on a spherical surface?

I am trying to generate terrain using Perlin noise. I understand how to generate it using Cartesian coordinates, but can't quite wrap my head around how it would work on a sphere. I know that you can project 2D surfaces onto spheres, but wouldn't the distortion mess up the noise distribution? The best idea I can come up with for generating uniform noise on the surface of a sphere is to map the point on the sphere to a 3D Cartesian coordinate and use a 3D noise function. (Basically, to generate a cube of noise and "shave away" the corners to make it round, as it were.) Is there a better method I'm missing?