As I mentioned in my last Little Boy Bakes post, Tyne has recently become very interested in baking - we make sure we do some baking together every Sunday lately and he really looks forward to it, infact the first thing he says every Sunday morning is "It's Sunday today isn't it...what shall we bake today Mummy!?"
As I've also mentioned, I'm not exactly Mary Berry when it comes to baking - I've never been a natural in the kitchen, but for some reason it's something I have been trying my hand at and actually enjoying more lately - I've been making quite a few new meals from scratch and actually really enjoying them, and although our baking efforts aren't going to win us a place on Bake Off any time soon - they are still pretty tasty and we have fun doing it, so what's not to love about that?!
This week we decided to attempt our first proper cake - Tyne loves chocolate fudge cake and was really excited to make his very own!
I was apprehensive but it actually turned out far better than I thought it would!
First we set about making the chocolate cake - for this I just followed a very simple basic chocolate sponge cake recipe - I decided to make two separate batters for each tin as it was just easier that way but if you'd prefer you could always double up the ingredients and split the batter between the two cake tins!
First I greased two 8 inch cake tins, and pre-heated the oven to 180c.
Then I gathered together all of the ingredients for one cake:
*3 eggs *6 oz caster sugar *6 oz self raising flour *6 oz softened butter *50 grams of sifted cocoa *A pinch of salt
All of the ingredients simply went into the mixing bowl together, and Tyne mixed them together for about a minute - I then took over and made sure the batter was smooth but was careful not to over-work it.
We then poured the batter into the cake tin, and repeated the process for the second cake tin.
We popped the cakes into the oven for 45 minutes, checking every now and then and once a skewer came out clean we removed them and let them cool for 5 minutes before removing from the tin.
Tyne's favorite part of any baking activity is, of course, licking the spoon after the mixing is done!
One the cakes were cooled, I decided I wanted to make the cake that bit more special - so decided to make it a Surprise Inside cake by cutting out a hole in the middle of the bottom cake and filling it with M & Ms!
I used a ramekin to make the hole because it's the only circular thing I had to hand but a cookie/sandwich cutter would work better - though to be fair the ramekin worked just fine!
We then set about making the chocolate fudge frosting, for this we used:
*100g milk chocolate broken up into pieces *200g softened butter *400g icing sugar *4 tbsp cocoa powder *2 tbsp milk
We melted the chocolate in the microwave, checking every 20 seconds until it was melted.
In another bowl we then whisked the butter and icing sugar together - this took quite a lot of elbow grease so I had to do it myself as it was too difficult for Tyne.
Once smooth, we added the cocoa powder, milk and melted chocolate and mixed it until smooth - then using a flat spatula we added a layer of the frosting between the cakes to sandwich them together.
We then covered the top of the cake with the remaining frosting, and to finish it off we grated some chocolate onto the top!
And voila! Our super delicious, surprisingly easy surprise inside M & M's chocolate fudge cake!
I can honestly say this was absolutely delicious - just as good as any chocolate fudge cake I've had in a restaurant, and the M & Ms ended up a little melty/gooey from the warmth of the cake which was super yummy too!!
We will definitely be making this one again!
Other Posts In This Series:
Little Boy Bakes - Super Easy Chocolate Chip Muffins
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