Chocolate Birthday Cake

My “baby” boy was 8 years old on January 1st. I can’t believe how the time has passed – it’s almost long enough to look back on his birth without reliving the horror all over again! As he shares his birthday with New Year’s Day and it’s only a week after Christmas, he claimed a Birthday Eve and a Birthday Boxing Day. Something no doubt his big sister will be taking advantage of in August!

My little one doesn’t really like icing, and really doesn’t like sugarpaste, so he requested a chocolate birthday cake with chocolate buttercream. We were under strict instructions not to let him see any of the preparations as he wanted it to be a surprise. He was very pleased to be banished to the living room to watch tv…

In order to make it a bit more special and lacking any further directions, I decided to go all out with the chocolate decorations as while he doesn’t like icing, he does like chocolate. I took a leaf out of Lorraine Pascale’s book and went with Maltesers round the side, but didn’t want to put them on the top as there had to be room for the candles.

I had been pre-warned about the difficulties of decorating with Maltesers by my friend Deborah, who has spent an evening wrestling escaping ones (they are very bouncy), so I made sure to use a thick layer of icing on the sides and pressed them in quickly before the icing got a chance to dry. With the ones that did manage to escape I imposed a harsh punishment: they were not allowed back on the cake. Instead I ate them.

I used Flakes to decorate the top of the cake and then sprinkled some crunchy chocolate balls over the middle. I thought it needed a bit of glitz so finished it off with some edible gold stars and glitter.

Chocolate birthday cake with extra chocolate!

Eight candles suited the design and it was pronounced a success by the birthday boy when he had blown them out and made his wish. Happy birthday Linus, I hope all your wishes come true!

Update 25/1/13

As a follow up to this post I thought I would share my second attempt at this cake for one of Linus’ friends who saw it and wanted the same. I made this cake in a smaller tin so that it was taller. Because I had a better idea of what I was doing this time, and hadn’t thought of maltesers as a topper for the first one, I think this is an improvement on the first. (Sorry Linus!). Happy Birthday Benjamin!

Chocolate Malteser birthday cake

Categories: Baking, Birthday cakes, Cakes

Tags: baking, birthday, birthday cake, cake, chocolate, chocolate cake, Flakes, frosting, icing, Lorraine Pascale, malteser cake