Recipe: Chocolate Cat Cake. It’s purrrrrfect, etc.

We need to talk about Kevin

My boss turned 40 this week and it was only right that this happy day was marked with a cat-shaped chocolate birthday cake, right?  Our chum Laura christened him Kevin and at a cake-fest in the office, Kev bravely gave his life for the enjoyment of us hungry office-workers.  Way to go Kevin.

This cake is very simple to make and keeps for a few days if you don’t hoover it up before then.

To buy:

For the cake –  *200g plain flour   *200g caster sugar   *1 teaspoon baking powder   *half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda   *40g best-quality cocoa (I used Green and Blacks)   *175g soft unsalted butter   *2 large eggs   *2 teaspoons real vanilla extract   *150ml soured cream

For the Icing –  *150g icing sugar  *100g  soft unsalted butter   *1 teaspoon vanilla extract   *a few teaspoons of cocoa   *splash of milk

For the topping –  *Bassets Licorice selection

To bake:

1.Take all of the cake ingredients out of the fridge and allow to come to room temperature.  Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 4/180oC / 160Oc fan and butter 2 20cm sandwich tins.

2. Now, in a large bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and bicarb, cocoa, butter, eggs, vanilla extract and sour cream.  Use a food processor or a hand whisk and beat until it’s smooth and thick.

Feline hungry?

3. Divide the mixture between the two greased tins and spread flat.  Bake until a skewer comes out clean but the cake has a springiness to it.  Will take around half an hour or so but check regularly.

4. Remove the cakes from the oven and press and tap out onto a wire rack and cool entirely.

5. Place one of the cakes on a drum and cut 2 triangles out of the other cake.  Using cocktail sticks fasten the triangles (ears) to the other cake (face).

6. To make the icing combine the icing sugar, butter, vanilla and a splash of milk in a bowl.  Leave a small amount of the white icing in one bowl and transfer the  lion’s share to another bowl and add cocoa to taste to this batch of icing.

7. Using a palette knife cover the cake with the chocolate icing.  Then add some of the white vanilla icing to the ears and the middle of the cat’s face.

8. I used licorice to make the cat’s eyes, heart-shaped nose and whiskers.

9. Ice a birthday message onto the drum if you like.  Add a few candles and say a special wish for the birthday boy or girl. x

Recipe: Secret Garden Birthday Cake

For a super special lady.

This weekend gone it was my boyfriend Josh’s mum (Leonie)’s birthday. Leonie’s 60th birthday in fact and something special was in order. So on Thursday, Josh and his sister – Simone – and I got cracking on a cake which we hoped would look just like her garden. Leonie’s garden is beautiful just like the scores of cakes she has made over the years for Simone and Josh’s birthdays.

To say we were scared of ending up with a cake-wreck on our hands is something of an understatement. We assembled at my flat armed with bags of icing, chocolate fingers and enough food colouring to send an entire school class doo-lally. We listened to happy songs, shouted at Question time when it came on the telly and laughed along to clips of The Day Today as we worked and boy did we work. All in all it probably took the three of us about 5 hours to finish the cake. By the end of it Josh looked clinically depressed,  as he made pebble after pebble from icing sugar dipped in silver iridescent food colouring,  I don’t think he has a career in baking.

But by midnight it was ready and we sealed it in a heavy-duty box ready to transport to Winchester the next day for Leonie’s party. The cake went down a treat and much back-slapping between the three of us star-bakers ensued. Leonie deserved nothing less than this dorky cake although Howard (Josh and Simone’s Dad) gets a ticking off for being unable to resist the chocolate fingers post-pub when he was more than a few shandy’s heavier. (We forgive him really!)

I am not sure I can remember how we made each part of this cake so can’t really give a full recipe, but I will summarise what we did below. If you want to make a special cake, all I can say is just do it! It will take longer than you think, but you’ll be better at it than you think. Good luck!

– The cake was a 6-egg mixture made with about 350g of flour, caster sugar and butter. The tin was very deep so it took ages (more than 40 minutes to cook) on about 180Oc.

– We used a block of ready made green icing to cover the cake, Simone used a pin to roll it flat and carefully covered the cake.

– The grass was made from desiccated coconut which we dyed green with food colouring. A beaten egg was used to help ‘stick’ it to the cake.

– The fence, which we placed all around the cake, was simply chopped-up chocolate fingers, stood up in piped-chocolate icing at the base of the cake. We ate far too many fingers so had to space them out widely. But as Howard knows, they’re fricking addictive!

– The pond is simply blue iridescent icing. The tree is a flake and green icing, cut into leaf shapes. The cat (it’s a cat, not repeat, not, a panda) is made from icing – white and black – that has been rolled and shaped.

– The pebbles are rolled balls of icing dipped in silver powdery food colouring and the flowers are icing (dyed about four different colours) stamped into flower shapes and decorated with tubes of icing to make the pollen. The shed was made from chopped nuts and a tube of chocolate icing.

– Although it’s not in this picture, we also used chocolate letters to spell out ‘Happy Birthday’. Bit of a cheat, but hey!

For days before we baked it, Simone and I were super scared of making this cake, but it was such fun. Well done to Josh on some excellent sugar-craft work, high-fives to Simone for pulling it off and once more to Leonie: happy happy birthday!! xx