Advent Calendar Day 5: Festive Birthday Cake

For those of you that don’t know, I’m blogging every day in the run up to Christmas! I’m calling my posts my Advent calendar, because instead of opening a door to a chocolate calendar I’m sharing a post with you.

I went a bit mad this week; I had a birthday cake to make and thought it deserved a festive sparkle! The cake was for a very special lady who loves baking too, so I needed to pull out all the stops. I decided to make my normal sponge with strawberries and cream, THEN make it gold and sparkly!

Chocolate sponge Ingredients:
100g butter
150g brown sugar
2 egg
200g plain flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoon cocoa powder
180ml milk

Butter Icing:
75g butter
125g icing sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa
1 teaspoon hot water

Decoration:
1 punnet of strawberries
Carton of double cream
Caramel sauce

Preheat the oven to 190°/ gas mark 5 or turn your Rayburn off! Cream the butter and sugar, then add in the eggs. Sift in all the dry ingredients and then add the milk. It’s so quick and easy!

So I made the chocolate sponge as normal and sandwiched the two halves together with whipped cream. Then I started to spray the whole thing gold!

I used Dr Oetker’s shimmer spay in gold to spray fine layers over the cake to build up the colour. Then I sprayed parts of the strawberries, I wanted the natural red colour to shine through as well.

I piped some chocolate butter icing around the edge and in the middle to attach the strawberries to the cake.

I drizzled shop bought caramel sauce (the type you get for icecream) over the top.

It went down a treat, everyone enjoyed it, especially the crazy gold aspect. It was light with a freshness from the strawberries.

I’m bringing this cake to Angie’s place for Fiesta Friday! Enjoy!

Melissa xx

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