Another birthday cake

It was our friend Jake's 18th so Ailsa and I decided  to do another joint effort with the birthday cake. We created the 'Toasted Marshmallow, Raspberry and Chocolate Cake'. It was a little bit made-up but I think it worked out quite well in the end!

Toasted Marshmallow, Raspberry and Chocolate Cake

• 125g butter (soften it up abit)
• 125g caster sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 175g self-raising flour
• 2 and a bit heaped tablespoons of cocoa powder 
• A punnet of raspberries 
• Bag of mini marshmallows (save some for the top)

Pre-heat the oven to 170c (fan) and grease up two smallish cake tins. Mix the butter and sugar together until really light and creamy then add the eggs, flour and cocoa powder and mix well. Fold in the marshmallows and raspberries, break up the raspberries a teeny bit with the spoon but don't mash them because you want to keep them in pretty big chunks. Spoon into the two tins (we used quite small ones but if you only have a big one just put all the mixture in one and bake for a bit longer) and pop them in the oven for about 20-25 minutes. They might not look completely firm when they're done but that's only because of all the marshmallows and raspberries, they'll set once they've cooled down.

Chocolate Butter Cream

• 60g butter (soften it up)
• 150g icing sugar 
• Enough cocoa powder to make it a nice chocolaty colour 
• A glug of milk
• Raspberries, marshmallows and malteasers to decorate 

Mix all your ingredients together (adding the milk slowly) until you have a nice creamy consistency. Spread half the butter cream over one cake and place the other one on top and spread the rest over that one. Singe the tops of the mini marshmallows - we put them on skewers and used the flame on the hob which worked quite well, then stick them in the butter cream on top of the cake along with the raspberries and the malteasers. Yummy squidgy chocolate cake. 

Buy a cake stand, and they will come

My Mum brought this beauty home yesterday, so of course I had to christen it with baked goodies of some sort as it looked so lonely on its own. I decided on Easter Nest cupcakes...

I just used my normal cupcake and butter cream recipe (click here) but added cocoa powder and milk to the icing. Spread a little butter cream across the top of the cake then pop the rest into a piping bag and pipe a circle round the edge of the cake for the 'nest'. Sprinkle with chocolate flakes (you can buy these or just grate some chocolate if you want) and pop three mini-eggs in the middle. I really wanted to put those tiny fluffy chicks you can buy in the middle of the nest but I couldn't find any, ahh well. Voila, super cute Easter treats!