Probably The Best Thing I’ve Ever Made

Right guys,

If I say so myself, I have excelled myself today. I promised myself that I would make the cake for my mum’s 60th birthday, someone else is doing the catering, but I said I would make a birthday cake for her.

As her name is Victoria, I thought that I’d make her a plain Victoria sponge with a difference. The recipe for this is below:

Classic Victoria Sponge

Ingredients:

• 225g/8oz butter or margerine, softened at room temperature
• 225g/8oz caster sugar
• 4 medium eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 225g/8oz self raising flour
• milk, to loosen
• Method
• 1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
  2. Grease and line 2 x 18cm/7in cake tins with baking paper.
  3. Cream the butter and the sugar together in a bowl until pale and fluffy.
  4. Beat in the eggs, a little at a time, and stir in the vanilla extract.
  5. Fold in the flour using a large metal spoon, adding a little extra milk if necessary, to create a batter with a soft dropping consistency.
  6. Spoon the mixture in the cake tin and gently spread out with a spatula.
  7. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until golden-brown on top and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
  8. Remove from the oven and set aside for 5 minutes, then remove from the tin and peel off the paper. Place onto a wire rack.
  9. I then bought some ready made icing, as I am not genetically wired to ice cakes at all and covered the top. I also mixed in chocolate chunks to the mixture, I don’t know how it works, but they don’t melt in the oven, it’s inspired.

  This was the end result:

  

  Now this is only the beginning; while picking up my mum’s present (it’s a doozie, but she reads this so nothing is being revealed until the 10th) I found an amazing little invention –

    

  YOU CAN MAKE CAKE THAT LOOK LIKE LOLLIPOPS!

  
  Now I don’t know about you, but I am EXCITED. The weather is also appalling, it’s rained for weeks, with barely a break and what better way of spending a day indoors than experimenting with baked goods?

  So here we go.

  Ingredients: 1/2 cup butter

  3/4 cup chocolate (dark 72%)

  3/4 cup sugar (cane)

  3 Tbsp Cocoa

  2 eggs

  3/4 cup flour

  pinch salt

  more chocolate to melt (of your choice, dark, milk, white etc)

  assorted sprinkles

  Cake Lollipops

  1) Melt the butter and chocolate in a pan

  

  2) Mix the butter and chocolate with the cocoa and sugar

  

  3) Add the flour and salt little by little. The mixture should be looking really thick and glossy at this point.

    

  4) Spoon the mixture into the little shells so they’re slightly proud of the tin.

  

  5) Close the lid and secure with the little keys that come with it

  6) Bake in a 170 degree preheated oven for 15-18 minutes

  

  7) Melt chocolate in a pan while these are in the oven

  8) Remove the cake balls from the oven and the little scoops and leave them to cool

    

  9) Roll the toothpick tips in the chocolate and stick them in the balls and leave them to cool like cement.

    

  10) Roll the balls in the chocloate and decorate however you wish.

  

  The problem I had was how to let the chocolate an decorations to dry. I ended up shoving them in a loo roll!

 

I can honestly say I have had so much fun making these and have seriously coated my kitchen in an explosion of sprinkles. I had a friend C come over for lunch, we sank several glasses of wine and had a wonderful day catching up and baking together. Safe from the elements and at the mercy of eggs, flour, sugar and cocoa.

Excellent stuff.