Littlest baker turned 5!

What a week last week was! Littlest baker turned a whole 5 years old on Thursday 21st and it feels like I spent most of last week (at least) preparing to celebrate and actually celebrating!

It all began with the cake, I've not actually done much cake decorating and certainly never tried to do anything on the scale that I was attempting with the Birthday cake so I spent quite a lot of time thinking about it and how it would work before I actually got down to the construction.

The cake itself was a chocolate sponge with a hint of espresso which added a lovely delicate twist to the overall flavour of the sponge.

 

One layer of the cake cooling

I went for a double layer of the chocolate sponge, covered in strawberry flavoured pink butter cream icing. With silver chocolate fingers wrapped around the outside and topped with strawberry flavoured pink chocolate buttons. All sounds simple enough, yet it still took the best part of six hours to make! Though having done it I think to do it again would be much easier and much quicker. I have always shied away of this kind of project for fear that I wouldn't be able to do it justice and was pleasantly surprised by the results. This was a big learning curve for me and I will use what I learnt to my advantage in the future.

The finished cake...

The finish isn't perfect but I was so very proud of myself for seeing the whole thing through and coming up with something pretty decent. Like I say, I learnt a lot of lessons doing this one so next time it will be much better. Though I will say I really liked the way the silver chocolate fingers looked against the pink of the icing, much better than plain white would have looked and added a touch of glamour.

 

They were super easy to make as well, simply get some Cadbury Dream chocolate fingers (I used just short of two packs on this cake) and lay out on a flat surface away from other food (and anything else that you don't want sprayed silver!) and spray evenly with some some Dr Oetker Shimmer spray. Leave the spray to dry for 10 minutes and then repeat the process until you have the desired level of colour. But beware! The spray has a knack of covering everything around it! It does wipe off very easily but still, don't say you weren't warned.

 

 

The oh so cute bunting you see adorning the cake was bought just before Christmas at a craft fair in Stafford and I sadly didn't keep the details of the person I bought it from. Though it should be relatively easy to make using two cake pop sticks and some fabric offcuts if you're the crafty type. 

 

All of this was done in secret whilst Littlest Baker was away at her Nanny and Granddad's for a few days for half term so was presented as a surprise on her actual birthday.



 

 

 

 

The cake was moist and the flavour of the strawberry butter cream and chocolate buttons worked wonderfully together with the chocolate and hint of espresso of the cake.

If you fancy making the Chocolate cake yourself the recipe is as follows:

 Ingredients

1. 250g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
2. 200g dark chocolate
3. 1 tbsp espresso powder (I actually used a Sachet of Millicano)
4. 100ml whole milk (I used skimmed, though whole would have a creamier texture)
5. 250g self-raising flour
6. 40g cocoa powder
7. 250g caster sugar
8. 4 large free-range eggs, lightly beaten
9. 1 tsp vanilla extract (I used .5 tsp vanilla and .5 tsp chocolate essence)
10. 150ml soured cream (I used 0% Greek yogurt)

Method

1. 1. Preheat the oven to 160°C/fan140°C/gas 3. Grease and line a deep, 23cm round loose-bottomed cake tin, then set aside. Melt the chocolate, butter, espresso powder and milk in a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water until smooth. Remove from the heat and set aside.
2. 2. Sift the flour and cocoa powder into a bowl, then add the caster sugar. Fold into the chocolate mixture along with the eggs, vanilla extract and soured cream.
3. 3. Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake in the oven for 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes. The cake is ready when a skewer inserted into the centre comes out with some moist crumbs sticking to it but not any raw cake batter. Set aside to cool completely in the tin.

The cake would be delicious smothered in Chocolate fudge butter cream and topped with a rocky road style topping of crushed biscuit, marshmallow, fudge pieces and cherries....I feel another project coming on!