Chocoholic Birthday Cake

The time finally came to make the ultimate chocolate cake. It was my friends birthday yesterday, we've known each other since we were 11 and the one thing you could never dispute...is that she loved chocolate. So it was an easy decision what sort of cake to do when it came to her surprise birthday cake.

Ok so first of all, it's not allll chocolate, I made the sponge a Victoria one, I thought if it was all chocolate then I'd probably kill her with sugar! But I did use chocolate buttercream to give it a bit of chocolatey goodness.

It's two tiered, leveled with my cake leveler, this is a really simple tool to help keep everything straight and even as it's so easy to make it wonky without realising.
I got mine from Lakeland for £3.29.

I thought rather than using icing to make it look like chocolate, I would use actual chocolate, one of my friends suggested I use Curly Wurlys on the outside as they have a nice pattern. This actually worked really well, thought it took 19 of them cut in half! I then covered the tops of the tiers in Cadbury's chocolate buttons, Maltesers and white chocolate stars. I piped some buttercream on for the finishing touch. To top it off I tied a purple Happy Birthday ribbon around it to give it the Cadburys touch!

The perfect cake for the chocolate lover Pin It Now!

Chocolate Dipped Norwegian Shortbread

It was kind of a brutal week this week, so to make things a bit happier I thought I'd bake something yummy as I haven't been able to bake a lot recently. I also know I haven't blogged for a while, I went on holiday to Turkey (which was amazing) and have been knackered since so I've been a bit lazy.

But here it is...the yummiest biscuit in the world...no joke. We make these in Norway at Christmas time, but to make them a bit more special I dipped them in chocolate and added some fun sprinkles to make them look pretty :) They taste of gorgeous butter, and only has 5 ingredients so they're super easy to make.

Recipe:
330g plain flour
250g butter
100g icing sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
300g chocolate - I used Cadburys...it just felt right for biscuits

Method:

1. Mix flour and baking powder and sift into a mixing bowl.
2. Cut up butter and crumble into mixture as well as you can.
3. Add the icing sugar and mix into a smooth dough.
4. Roll out into a long sausage about 4-5 cm thick.
5. Wrap and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
6. Preheat oven to 180 degrees (160 fan oven)
7. Remove from fridge and with a sharp knife cut into slices about 0.5cm thick.
8. Place evenly spaced on a lined baking tray, they don't grow ridiculously in the oven so they won't need a stupid amount of space.
9. Bake for 12-20 minutes depending on oven, they should just be starting to turn golden around the edges.
10. Leave to fully cool on a cooling tray.
11. Melt chocolate over a banne-marie and take the cooled biscuits, one at a time and dip half of it in the chocolate, once you've filled a tray, sprinkle with whatever treats you'd like to use and place in the fridge for an hour to cool.
12. They chocolate will never be a solid as it once was, but as long as you don't leave them right in the sun you should be fine!
13. Eat. Nom!!!

These are incredible, I can't put it in to words, but seriously, try them. You won't be disappointed! Pin It Now!