Coca Cola Cake

while browsing Nigella & Mary Berry's cake books on Thursday I stumbled upon Nigella's Coca-Cola Cake recipe. It's chocolate flavoured - exactly what Zack wanted for his birthday. So I rushed off and bought a bottle of coke (the full fat, full sugar, full caffeine version), and made it for the 7th birthday party yesterday. thanks to Haribo and Nigella for the decorative suggestion....

 

it's another really easy recipe, that requires nothing but a wooden spoon and a whisk. and comes out delicious.

Quite a bit of baking went down in August

So our little brother turned 4! and we just had to bake him a chocolate cake - thank you Aunty Erin and the BBC for the delish recipe!

I had oodles of icing left over from various things, so decided to swirl them onto cupcakes and sprinkle them with a bit of happiness (orange & yellow sprinkles). not too shabby.

Here's a South African mainstay : melktert. It's really delicious. I used a recipe in a classic SA cookery book (Kook en Geniet) and they just AREN'T the way I remember them. I will have to hunt for another one and make them again! 's all there is to it

Mocha cupcake recipe transformed

Those wonderful people at the Hummingbird Bakery have a wonderful Mocha cupcake recipe that I transformed into a cake for the school fair/fete. Delicious!

chocolate fudge cake, take 2

You'll possibly remember that I made this cake for Zack's 3rd birthday last year, and you can't go wrong with a chocolate cake. So here it is with different decorations for Calvin's 2nd birthday this weekend.

we've been busy

Does whatever a spider can

Zack's Spiderman Birthday Cake for the party. There, I've put it on the web. It represents hours of baking and icing. One thing I can say is that the colouring paste is a real winner - managed to get this indigo blue by being heavy handed with it. I did the black lines with the buy-in-a-tube variety which comes out very shiny. It was an efficient solution to the "black icing colouring" dilemma I was in. I'll definitely use it again.

Allyson's Dark Chocolate Tray Cake

Back in good ol' SA we have a supermarket chain called Pick'nPay. They have their own little cookery school - it's been going for some 20 years or more. Just like at Waitrose here, you can pick up a leaflet as you leave the store with some great recipes. Considering that these used to be photocopies, you'll have an idea of when last I took one. Today was our annual community Christmas day at church - when they throw the doors open to harrassed shoppers and exhausted parents - serve up lots of Xmas cheer, spicey apple drinks, and loads of home baking. I contributed with an all time CLASSIC which never fails : Allyson's Dark Chocolate Tray Cake. It's got lots of sugar, cocoa and buttermilk in it. And it is divine.
You bake it straight in a greased inch deep baking tray. You pour the icing on top (I did it while it was still warm). And it is moist and chocolatey and you can't go wrong. OK, I think I've sold it enough

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake & Icing

I am dead keen to make a fabulous chocolate cake or choccie cup-cakes. I've been perusing Martha's recipes, and the ones on the Waitrose site, as well as my modest collection of cookery books, and decided to try Nigella's Sour Cream Chocolate Cake because it sounded smooth and very chocolatey. Oh dear me... it's turned out to be a far-too-sweet chocolate affair. It has good chocolatey colour and a lovely fine crumb (smooth texture), but overall it's not chocolatey enough for me. Or rather, it's not as 'dark chocolate' as I'd hoped for. The recipe for the icing produced something that's lovely and smooth and light, but far too sweet. I just feel like it needs to be dark and bitter, rather than light, chocolate, whippy.
Another thing is that my decorating technique is horribly OLD FASHIONED. I don't think it works at all. So, overall, there's heaps of room for improvement.

I think I'm going to pension this cake off (to the grateful & hungry souls at Keith's office), and make the box of brownies Heath sent me for my birthday. It's one of those – just add oil, an egg and hot water – jobs. It looks painless, and might be more satisfying in the chocolate arena. Let's wait and see.