Heart Shaped Birthday Cake

It's been a bit of a crazy time for us with John away in South Sudan since August. I was determined this year to not put huge pressure on myself to create the perfect birthday part and cake for Isabella. Memories of previous year's efforts and the dramas in creating them still inter for us all!

I'd used the idea of surrounding the cake with white chocolate covered biscuit fingers last
year and it worked really well...and meant the icing around the cake didn't have to be perfect. I also replicated the paper cut out number (for birthday years) with sprinkles around it...although this didn't stand out as well as last year.

I had found the instructions for making the heart on Pintrest. It just seemed too good to be true - simple and very effective - and it was. The key was finding a square and round tin that were the right size. To figure this out I held the round tin up to the edge of various square tins until I got the right fit.


Isabella asked for a chocolate cake. I used an easy recipe from Sophie Gray's 'Enjoy'. See below
I tried making the cakes the same height by putting the same level of mixture in them...this didn't work but it was easy enough to slice a layer off the higher one.

I made Butter Cream Icing - I like this because it is easy to use and can be whipped up in the food processor. See below

I used pink tubular wafers to put around the outside and added a ribbon to make sure they stayed put.
A good end result, minimal fuss and no stress!



DANA'S CHOCOLATE CAKE 
from Destitute Gourmet by Sophie Gray
Very moist cake, freezes well, either process in food processor or put all in
bowl and beat together.
1 & 2/3 c flour
1 & 1/2 t baking soda
1 & 1/2 c sugar
2/3 c cocoa powder
1 t salt
1 & 1/2 c milk
100g butter, melted
2 eggs
1 t vanilla essence
Oven at 180 C, grease a 20cm loose-bottom cake tin and line bottom - it is a very liquid mix and you don't want it to leak!! Put all ingredients into
processor and mix until smooth. Pour into tin, bake 50 min to 1 hour, check if done with skewer.

Butter Cream Icing
125 g softened butter
1 tbsp warm milk
flavouring of your choice
colouring of your choice
375 g icing sugar


Put the butter, milk and any flavour or colour in a mixing blow. Sift in the icing sugar a little at a time and beat well between each addition until it has all been incorporated and the mixture is light and creamy.