Bumper Birthday

Both of my cousin's kids have their birthday in the same month and for a few years now we've made the cake for the youngest whose birthday falls earlier in the month. Last year, however, he declared that he "wanted a different cake" than the very cool (we thought) "4" chocolate cake with orange coloured butter icing, and decoration. Turns out he is not a fan of anything but chocolate cake that looks like chocolate (and not fluorescent orange!) This year we ended up baking a cake for both of them for their joint birthday party.

As fortune would have it, I just received a copy of Fiona Cairns' Bake & Decorate from a competition run by Chris Dreyfus' Silver and Claret  and the Family Chocolate Cake looked perfect for the chocolate lover birthday boys. It's a very succulent cake which I have now perfected after making the recipe a few times for enough mixture for the two cakes - a figure eight and a figure five.

My hubbie loves decorating cakes and took on the icing of the racing track figure eight with a cocoa butter cream, whilst I stuck with a chocolate ganache (from the chocolate celebration cake, also in Bake & Decorate) for the plainer 5. It was the first time I'd made ganache frosting, but it was quite easy to work with, as I just let it drip down the sides, and spent more time wiping around the cake!

The cakes were a great success and both birthday boys were very excited and impressed, and they both tasted fantastic!