Kit Kat Birthday Cake

I made this cake for my lovely friend’s birthday, mainly because he bet his girlfriend that she would never make it for him. So maybe she cheated a little, because she got me to make it, but oh well. It was like diabetes on a plate and it was delicious. Also a perfect distraction from the dissertation hell we are currently going through (only one week left YAAAYY%$$^%$%£”$£).

I would say this cake should be served in small slices because it is super sweet, but it just happens to create perfect slices every four kit kats… and yes, we are all going to die of obesity.

Ingredients

150g self-raising flour

75g Galaxy drinking chocolate powder

180g caster sugar

2tsps baking powder

200g butter

3 large eggs

3tbsps of hot water

To decorate

Butter

Icing sugar

Galaxy drinking chocolate powder

Large packet of MnMs (or other sweet of your choice)

A butt load of Kit Kats (my cake took 19 two-fingered ones)

Firstly make the two chocolate sponges. Preheat the oven to 175⁰C and line two 20cm cake tins with parchment.

In a large mixing bowl measure out all of the cake ingredients, except for the hot water. Use an electric whisk to combine everything into a smooth batter.

Add the hot water and whisk again for a couple of minutes until the mixture is really smooth.

Divide between the two tins and bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes, or until springy to the touch and a toothpick pricked in the middle comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack.

Once the cakes have completely cooled, you can begin to decorate. First of all you need to make a large amount of icing so cream a generous blob of butter in a large mixing bowl.

Add a couple large spoonfuls of the galaxy powder, depending on taste, and cream into the butter. Sift icing sugar, adding small spoonfuls of hot water as needed until you’ve made a decent amount of butter cream.

Place the bottom cake on a stand and cover with just under half of the butter cream.

Add the second cake and cover the top in icing, leaving about a quarter of the butter cream left over.

Get your Kit Kats. If you’re a numpty like me and bought 4-fingered ones instead of 2-fingered then carefully chop them in half. There may have been a few Kit Kat causalities that ended up being eaten, totally by accident of course. You could use any flavour of Kit Kat here that you wanted- white, dark, orange, mint - go nuts. I won’t tell you that I couldn’t find the other flavours of Kit Kats in ASDA and that’s why I went for all milk because that would just be silly…

Slap a bit of icing onto the bottom half of each Kit Kat, pretending like you’re a master plasterer and then gently press it up against the side of the cake. Carry on all the way around until the cake is completely surrounded.

If you have any icing left over slap it onto the top, then generously sprinkle the brightly coloured confectionery of your choice! This cake is great because it’s so easy to make, but looks really impressive. And don’t say I didn’t warn you that it’s sweet.

We then made a fort out of loads of blankets and pillows and ate the cake inside it with many bottles of wine. Adult celebration at its finest.  

Porter Cake

This is a cake my mum was making for a friend’s birthday. Sorry about some of the pictures, she was left alone with the camera while I was out… Also I can’t show you what I looks like inside because it would be a bit weird to cut someone’s birthday cake open. I am assured however that it is very nice. It’s essentially a boozy fruit cake, which would not be my cup of tea but I imagine would be nice if you’re into that kind of thing.

Ingredients

350g plain flour

¼ tsp mixed spice

175g butter

275g soft brown sugar

450g mixed dried fruit

50g glacee cherries, chopped

50g walnuts, chopped

Zest of 1 lemon

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

150ml warm porter stout

3 eggs, beaten

Preheat oven to 140⁰C.

Line and grease a 20cm round cake tin and tie a band of brown paper around it to protect the cake from burning.

Sift the flour and mixed spice into a large mixing bowl. Add the butter cut into slices to the flour and rub into crumbs using your fingertips.

Stir in the sugar, fruit, nuts and lemon zest and mix well.

Dissolve the bicarbonate into the warm stout.

Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the beaten eggs and stout mixture.

Mix everything well.

Pour into the tin and bake for 2 hours, then reduce the heat to 120⁰C and bake for a further hour or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tin.

As an extra note on birthday cakes, I keep forgetting to mention the cake I made for my housemate’s 21^st weeks ago. I wasn’t able to actually blog about it properly because I didn’t have time to take pictures of every stage but here’s what it looked like in the end.

It’s supposed to be an Apple iPod (hope you got that…) in bright green because that’s his favourite colour. It’s a basic chocolate sponge mix with butter cream on top. It was exciting for me because I got to use my new Lakeland hemisphere pan for the first time to get the 3D effect for the Apple logo. I then used the Dr Oetker silver spray to decorate it and I was surprised how well it came out.

Mary Berry's Easter Biscuits

I realise it’s after Easter now, but these biscuits are pretty darn tasty so if I were you I’d make them now anyway. I did actually make them before Easter, after seeing The Great British Bake Off Easter special with Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood. I love it when they give us GBBO junkies a quick fix every now and again. If you happen to be like my mother and own napkins suitable for every occasion then bung these bad boys in a basket lined with Easter napkins- then you can pretend like they’re for a particular reason and not just because you want some biscuits.

Ingredients

200g butter

150g caster sugar

2 large egg yolks

400g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

1tsp mixed spice

1tsp ground cinnamon

2-4tbsp milk

200g currants

Caster sugar, for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 180⁰C and line a couple baking trays with parchment.

I made this mixture in my mum’s KitchenAid because I saw Mary Berry did on the programme, but I don’t think it’s necessary, as it’s a really easy dough to make. First cream the butter and sugar together in a large mixing bowl.

Add the egg yolks and beat into the mixture. (If you don’t know what to do with the leftover egg whites you can free them in ice-cube trays to use later.)

Sift in the flour and spices and 2 tbsps of milk and mix to form a dough. Add the rest of the milk if you need to. You might need your hands at the end to really bring everything together.

Lightly flour a work surface. Tip out the mixture and add the currants by kneading them into the dough.

Roll the dough out to a thickness of about 5mm and then use whatever shape cutters you like to make the biscuits.

Place them onto the trays and sprinkle the tops with some caster sugar before baking for 15 minutes or until pale-golden brown. A good tip I read was that you needn’t be scared of opening to oven to check on them like you would with a cake because they’re not meant to rise.

Cool on a wire rack, sprinkling with some more sugar as they come out of the oven.

My mum and I ended up taking these to her friend’s house where we spent a morning dyeing wool…(don’t ask.)