Birthday Cake and presents

I finally managed to finish the taught part of my Masters and therefore have a tiny bit more time on my hands. This time started the day before my birthday so I had relatively little time to plan but I was determined to make the best birthday cake ever. Therefore I hit Tastespotting for some cake ideas and I was struck by a beautiful cake made by Naturally Ella. Then I thought of another cake I had seen on Food network that used Pirouette cookies around the outside. I wish we had pirouette cookies here but alas I decided to make do with cadbury finger biscuits and the design I wanted was complete.


My Basket of roses chocolate and vanilla marble cake

The roses are piped icing and are actually relatively easy to do. I found a few tutorials on youtube and I was away. The cake inside (again inspired by Naturally Ella) is marbled chocolate and vanilla. I used a completely different recipe however and enhanced the chocolate flavour using some freshly brewed coffee. This picture was taken at my birthday dinner with my family and I also tried to get some photos of people happily eating the cake. unfortunately the people in question look demented, I will assume that they are just too excited about digging into the cake and not possessed somehow. (Side note: this cake is not known to cause demonic possession but you may look crazy while eating it, purily because you are destroying the beautiful flowers ; ).

The recipe

150g Butter
125g white sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 egg yolks
4 Tbsp Milk
250g Cake Flour
Pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder

Chocolate part
150g Cocao Powder
50ml Freshly brewed coffee

Beat together the butter and sugar until light and whiter in colour. Add the egg yolks and beat. Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder and add the vanilla to the milk. Slowly add the flour and milk mixtures to the butter in thirds and mix thoroughly. When mixed put 2/3 of mixture into a greased cake pan.
To make the chocolate just add the cocao powder to the mixture and add the coffee to achieve the desired texture.
Put the chocolate mix on the top of the vanilla and swirl just enough to get the marbling. Then bake for 45mins on gas mark 5.

When the cake is cooled divide it into 2 and use chocolate icing in the centre and to form a crumb coat.
The roses icing is a tradition buttercream with a crumb coat of chocolate butter cream. I applied the roses once the chocolate coat was dry and then attached the basket of Cadbury Fingers with a little extra chocolate icing et voila..