BIRTHDAY CAKE
For Nola’s first birthday I was determined to create something perfect but with minimal effort!! This cake looks so impressive and is so easy to make!
Firstly the recipe for the best chocOLATE cake:
INGREDIENTS
225g unsalted butter
4 eggs
225g self raising flour
200g sugar
115 g drinking chocolate
1 heaped teaspoon of coca powder
225g Bar of chocolate (melt)
METHOD
Turn oven on to 180c and grease bake tin
Cream butter and sugar
Add eggs
Fold in flour/drinking choc/cocoa
Stir in melted 225g bar of chocolate
Bake for 45mins-1hour - until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean
TOP TIPS
No1 Cake Tin - don’t try to cut it to size, if you want it to look professional just get a tin to bake it in (I got mine in a charity shop for 70p!)
Make sure the cake has fully cooled before decorating
Make a cake board - because its such a large cake I recommend making a cake board. Get a piece of card big enough and cut into a rectangle shape, I doubled up the card to make it extra strong. Then wrap in baking paper. So simple but looks so good!
Icing - I bought ready made icing, pink and white & piped it on to the cake, its so much less hassle and mess!
Decorating - I made rainbow meringues and chocolate covered strawberries & popcorn. Then I bought chocolate pretzels & macaroons from Marks & Spencer. Adding in flowers from the garden gave it an extra special touch, but make sure you check the flowers first for insects. Start by putting the bigger decorations on first (strawberries) and filling in with the medium (macaroons) and then filling in the gaps with the smaller (popcorn etc). Add in the flowers and any cake toppers last. Some edible glitter always goes down well too!I got gorgeous bear cake toppers which gave an extra special touch.
Personalised Cookie - by stamping on some icing it gave a gorgeous effect - I used this stamping kit with pre made icing.
Art
