Layers of chocolate sponges with chocolate buttercream and topped with Cadbury mini eggs.
I was asked by my boyfriend's family to make a cake for his grandad's birthday. I picked out Mary Berry’s Death by Chocolate Cake recipe first, thinking it would be perfect. I decided to make a practice cake before the actual one to make sure the recipe was right, but also just to practice. I had far too much hassle with this cake than there should have been with making a simple chocolate cake.
The recipe required golden syrup in it, which along with the other wet ingredients, made the cake mixture unusually more runny than usual, which did worry me as to how they would turn out once baked. But, the real problem I had with this runny mixture is that the cake tins we were using were new and we couldn’t decide whether these little rubber parts on the bottom were meant to be taken off (I couldn’t remember whether my other cake tins had them or not). So we decided to chance it and leave them on.
When I transported the cake tins to the oven, I noticed some mixture on the floor. No big deal, I thought, I must have accidentally spilt some when making it earlier. Then a few minutes into the baking time, I could see it dripping through the cake tin into the oven. My sister, my mum and I rushed to put some baking trays underneath to cake to catch all of the drippings as they baked because that seemed a better idea than trying to take all the mixture out to get the rubber pieces out. Finally, once they came out they were actually great, which was a relief! They had baked nicely and each sponge sliced nicely, to create four sponge layers for the cake.
The buttercream was the second hassle. It turned out nice and tasted good, but was just too thick to pipe easily and just didn’t spread easily on the sponges. This was all before I had found out that adding a few tablespoons of boiling water to the buttercream would make it a nice smooth consistency for spreading. So I struggled on, covering the sponges with buttercream and stacking the layers. We quickly decided because of how difficult the buttercream was to handle, that we would not cover the sides of the cake with it and that it looked perfectly fine without! It was also Easter when we made it, so we added some Cadbury mini eggs to decorate the top, which added to the look.
Needless to say, I did not use this recipe for the birthday cake I made for my boyfriend's grandad; it was actually my chocolate drip cake that was for the birthday and thankfully turned out amazing! This death by chocolate cake did actually taste really good and I wouldn’t hesitate to make it again, as I have accepted that the issues I had were purely my own fault! (Although as a HUGE chocolate lover myself, I wouldn’t call it Death by Chocolate Cake, I’d just call it a regular chocolate cake because it didn’t blow my chocolatey mind, but it did taste good).
Difficulty rating: 2/10
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