A Ramshackle Excuse for a Birthday Cake

This is so us.  Drew couldn’t decide whether to have chocolate cake or plain vanilla sponge for his birthday.  We couldn’t decide whether to have chocolate icing or buttercream.  We didn’t know whether to make it Eastery or not.  And the finishing flourish is what happens when you have quality time together in the kitchen.

So it’s a half-chocolate, half-vanilla, Easterish birthday cake.  I’m sharing it, even though I’m fairly sure that this is a never-to-be-repeated experiment.

Line 2 7″ or 8″ cake tins.

Weigh 4 large eggs.  It probably comes to about 210g.  Measure out exactly the same weight in self-raising flour, golden caster sugar and soft butter.  Add a teaspoon of baking powder, 2 tablespoons milk and a couple of teaspoons of vanilla extract.

Use an electric whisk to beat this all together; about a minute should do it.  Put half of the mixture into one of the tins.  Add 2 tablespoons of good sifted cocoa powder to the remaining mixture and fold in.  Now pop this into a separate tin.  Put both of the tins into a pre-heated oven (180 degrees) and bake for 20 – 30 minutes.  When they smell great and are bouncy to the touch, they are done.

Filling and Icing

Melt a 100g bar of dark chocolate in the microwave.

Beat together 100g soft butter, 250g sifted icing sugar and 3 teaspoons vanilla extract.  Use half of this to sandwich the cake together.

Now add the melted chocolate to your remaining buttercream.  It’ll probably look worryingly stiff at this point.  Don’t worry.  Just beat in 1 – 2 tablespoons of cold milk with your electric whisk and it’ll smooth out beautifully.  Use this immediately to ice your cake.

Decorate with Mikado sticks (that’s your nest, of course), Cadbury mini-eggs and crumbled Flake.