The Birthday Cake

 

Happy Birthday to the bestest husband in the world!

This is a ‘different’ post – one of celebration and love.

I have borrowed the recipe, from Deeba of PAB. Deeba, thank you so much for helping me attempt a birthday cake on my own! I have tried to do justice to the wonderful recipe. Pictures had to taken furtively as the cake was meant to be a surprise for the hubby. Kids were all excited and ‘tried’ to help with the cake making too.

What did  I make?

Two recipes of Deeba’s Eggless chocolate vanilla cake without the chocolate centre, and one recipe of Eggless chocolate walnut cake. The variations for the vanilla cake were I did not use cherries for the topping, did not use vanilla sugar. I used a mixture of sunflower and olive oil and vanilla essence for flavour. For the chocolate cake, I used a mixture of sunflower and olive oil again, Ghiradelli cocoa powder and did not use walnuts for the topping. As I did not have a 6 inch tin, I used a 9 inch one – the cake did not rise much and flattened out. That was useful in a way – I did not have to torte too much for I was going to layer it. . 

I made the cakes a day ahead, cooled them well in the fridge overnight, and then ‘dressed it up’.For decoration, I used Tropolite with minced cherries in it. I used this whipping to sandwich the chocolate cake between the 2 vanilla cakes. For the icing, I used chocolate ganache, again made a day ahead and stored in the fridge. The whipped cream decoration and the birthday message on top were piped on by my 9 year old daughter, I am very proud of her. The chocolate curls were ‘curled out’ from a block of cooking chocolate using a serrated knife.

I need to improve on torting skills.

There, now that I have given you a complete account of the making, some pictures are in order!