Monday 20 January 2014

Birthday girl

Last week was my 22nd Birthday, so I thought a birthday related post would be fitting.


 
This year I spent the weekend before my Birthday (my Birthday is on a Monday, yuk!) relaxing at a spa with my mum, and my actual Birthday was spent working....BOO! So to try and make my Birthday a little bit more fun I went and treated myself to a manicure and pedicure. 


My mum also bought me a Black Forest Gateau for my Birthday cake, I really love Gateau and don't particularly like Birthday cake, unless is chocolate, layered with chocolate and sprinkled in.... chocolate. But as my Birthday is so close to Christmas, chocolate is pretty much the last thing I want right now. However If you do like chocolate here is possibly the best chocolate cake recipe ever, I made this cake for my Step-Dads Birthday last year and everyone was so impressed. 


1) Preheat oven to gas mark 4 or 180 degrees 

you can either used two or three greased tins to cook your cake in, if using two just make sure your cake is cooked in the middle before removing from the oven. 

2) Now the first step is to melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of hot water on your stove (or even in a microwave), make sure you keep stirring it so it doesn't over cook or burn. set aside.

3) In another bowl whisk together the water and cocoa powder, then add the buttermilk and also set aside. 

4) Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt together into yet another medium bowl, there is a lot of bowls being used here but trust me, its worth the mess. 

5) then whisk the butter, sugar and vanilla together in a different bowl, preferably with an electric whisk, but by hand is fine, until its light and fluffy. Then slowly add the melted chocolate to the mix and once fully combined add a third of the flour mixture, followed by half of the buttermilk mixture, keep repeating this until everything is fully mixed together. 

6) You then separate the mixture into your tins and cook for 25-30 minutes. Once cooked leaved the cakes to stand for at least 10 minutes before attempting to remove them from the tins. 

7) Once the cakes have fully cooled you can decorate them, this is my favourite bit. You can pretty much do whatever you want here, but here is an example of a ganache topping. 


Enjoy!


the cake in the recipe book
 




my cake!
 





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