Dan Lepard's Easy Chocolate Birthday Cake

So right now, we're in hopefully (sunny) Scotland and by the time you're reading this, we will have produced a stunning Father's Day cake for the husband.  With it being our seventh wedding anniversary tomorrow as well, I figured what better way to tick off a new recipe than to bake a celebratory chocolate cake.  This also helped justify why I needed to pack my sandwich tins for holiday.

Artfully decorated by Miss A with giant jazzes

We always take basics with us to cope with the first night just in case we don't make it to the supermarket - normally Weetabix, bread, frozen milk (it can defrost on the way) and a few other odds and ends.  Our favourite Scottish hideaway used to have a well-stocked pantry of basics left by previous visitors but this new location is an unknown quantity so I included all of the dry ingredients weighed out already and then threw in my scales too - just in case neither location had a set.

Then it just needed a quick trip to the local shops for eggs and cream and some magic from Miss A and hopefully at some point during this week, I'll be able to furnish this pre-written post with a picture of the finished cake.

In the meantime, here's a link to the recipe online.


Updated 17th June 2012 @ 21:10

There's just something about me and chocolate cakes (excluding brownies) that just don't seem to be working well together on this blog.  When we finally arrived at our destination, I realised that despite ticking them off from my holiday packing list, I actually forgot to bring my scales with me.

My holiday packing list

Unfortunately, the scales at the cottage are a bit hit and miss (although if I'm honest, my own scales are temperamental) and so this cake was destined from the start to not be perfect.  Add to that my decision to halve the recipe and baking in an unfamiliar oven; plus, not checking that the batter was evenly spread in the pan, I was lucky it even resembled a cake.  And because I was so worried about it sinking, I didn't dare look at it until 25 minutes had passed.  By which time it was cooked, but a little dry.

Lepard's cake is stuffed with whipped cream and jam before being slathered in chocolate icing.  Because we already had an amazing cake in our holiday fridge on arrival (more on that another night - it deserves its own special post), I decided to cut down on the cream and just make a simple ganache for Miss A to spread over the top of the cake.

The flavour of the cake was really good.  It just probably need a little less time in the oven and a little more filling/topping to disguise it's dryness.  Miss A was really proud of her efforts and it was a good recipe to allow her to help with every single stage, apart from melting the butter and heating the cream for the ganache.

I owe it to this recipe to bake it in its true form another time.  In the meantime, I'm off to polish off some more of the other cake before falling into a sugar-induced coma.  Laters!

PS: It's been mostly raining with a tiny glimmer of sunshine!