A couple of weeks ago it was Mr Frugal’s birthday and as he was at work all day, I decided to make him a birthday cake ready for when he got in from work. Not just any chocolate cake though, I wanted to make him the best chocolate cake he’d ever had – I’m nothing if not ambitious you know!
I made a normal 2 layer chocolate sponge cake using this recipe (except I left the choc chips out). I sandwiched the layers together with cherry jam and covered it in the most amazing chocolate buttercream you’ve ever tasted. Next up I covered it with Minstrels and Maltesers and added a candle and Voila – an amazing chocolate cake!
Super Amazing Chocolate Butter-cream
50g butter or margarine
50ml milk
120g cocoa powder
Up to 500g icing sugar
Add the milk, butter, cocoa and around half of the icing sugar to a bowl and mix it all together. I like to use my electric beaters and I put a tea towel over the bowl to avoid disappearing in a cloud of icing sugar.
Gradually add in more icing sugar until you get the consistency you need – if you’re spreading it, you don’t need it to be as stiff as if you were piping it.
Because it’s almost Christmas, here’s an example of how you can use the chocolate butter-cream – to make Rudolph cupcakes. You can use Smarties or something similar for the eyes and noses and chopped up Curly Wurly for the antlers.
