Birthday Cake

I really enjoy baking, and do a lot of it, but one of the things that I really enjoy doing but don't often get an opportunity to do, is decorating cakes. Last year I made a very decadent one for my friends Katherine and David for their 30th birthday.

I chose a really rich chocolate cake recipe (I can't remember which, or from what book now, I have several really good recipes) and made a double quantity, which I divided equally into three 20cm cake tins, as I wanted to make a layer cake. Often recipes for layered cakes will call for the whole mixture to go in one extra deep tin - you then get the joy of cutting it to pieces afterwards. I've never had much luck with this, but making three separate cakes really worked. It meant I had to cut the tops off so they would sit flat, but this was really just a good way of checking that the cake was edible. ;P

Once the cakes had cooled sufficiently, it was a matter of gluing them together. For this cake, I think I used a blackcurrant jam and cream. I've also successfully used plum jelly and marmalade for the inbetween bits (not together in the same cake though!).

I then made a LOT of a very rich chocolate butter cream icing, which I smooshed all over the sides, and spread evenly with a knife to smooth.

After that, I indulged in making a rather thick ganache, 2/3 chocolate to 1/3 cream, which I poured onto the top. It pooled beautifully and spread out to stop at the edge of the cake where it met the buttercream icing. At this stage it looked a wee bit messy, so I used some of my remaining buttercream icing to pipe a ring around the edge to cover the join. Once the ganache had set, I piped buttercream swirls around the top of the cake. They weren't especially neat as I'm not very well practised at piping, but they came out okay. I also piped a giant "30" into the centre of the cake, in case they couldn't remember how old they were.

As an extra decoration, I decided to pipe chocolate shapes to put in the swirls. I based these on card decks, since both enjoy playing card games, and made clubs and spades from dark chocolate, and hearts and diamonds from white. I would have liked to make these red, but I only had a water-based food colouring, which is not compatible with chocolate. I made the shapes by laying out a sheet of baking paper, heating the chocolate to temper, then putting in an icing bag and piping through a fine nozzle to create an outline before filling with random zigzag lines. They were very easy and quick to make.

The final thing that I had wanted to do was to make chocolate curls to go on the side. You do this by spreading a layer of chocolate onto a flat surface, then using a knife to carefully curl flakes off as it cools. I've done it once before - about six or seven years ago. This time I just couldn't get it to work, so I gave up. Instead, I broke the chocolate sheet into pieces, and laid these onto the sides of the cake.

This was the result: