‘Sweet as cake and cute as can be’
I have some lovely photos and memories of birthday cakes my mum used to make for me and my brother and as I got older that I use to help her decorate. Castle cakes, football stadiums and a computer cake are in the top. So, when it came to Baby B’s construction cake, I had to make it myself.
I found this amazing recipe on BBC Food by Jane Hornby. It said it took under an hour, which it did and so I thought I would give it a go. It was exactly true to form. If you need a great chocolate cake or a construction cake, please give this a go.
Baby B and 15 other children, approved.
Ingredients
- 250g unsalted butter
- 50ml whole milk
- 150g whole natural yogurt
- ½ tsp. vanilla extract
- 3 large eggs
- 250g brown sugar
- 250g self-raising flour
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 50g cocoa powder
For the buttercream
- 2 tbsp. cocoa powder
- 2 tbsp milk
- 200g unsalted butter
- 300g icing sugar
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
To decorate
- Large round cake board
- 2 plastic diggers, one dump trunk
- 9 x four-finger KitKats
- Handful of smarties
- Marker pen
- 10x5cm rectangle cardboard
- 1 drinking straw
- Sticky tape
Method
- Heat the oven to 350F/180c. Use a little butter to grease the sides and bases of two 20-22cm sandwich tins. Melt the rest of the butter in a small saucepan. Off the heat, add the milk, yogurt and vanilla, followed by the eggs. Beat well with a fork.
- Put the dry ingredients plus ¼ tsp salt into a large bowl. Whisk to combine – this aerates and saves sifting. Tip the wet ingredients and whisk to a smooth, silky batter.
- Pour the batter straight into the prepared tins and put into the middle shelf of the oven. Bake for 25 minutes or until risen and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cakes come out clean. Cool for at least 10 minutes in the tin, then carefully invert the cakes and leave to cool upside down on a cooling rack
- Make the buttercream. Stir the cocoa into 2 tbsp. milk until smooth. Put the butter into a large bowl and sift the icing sugar on top. Add the cocoa mixture, vanilla and a pinch of salt. Beat for a few minutes with electric beaters or a wooden spoon if you don’t have it. Make sure it is creamy and spreadable. Add the extra 1 tsp. milk if you need to.
- Place one of the cakes towards the back of the plate and fix it with a little of the buttercream to stop it slipping about. Spread ¼ of the buttercream across the cake.
- Sandwich the second cake on top. With a small, serrated knife, cut away a scallop-shaped crater from the top cake. Cut about halfway down into the sponge and removing about a quarter of the top of the cake. Keep the piece you removed. Position two diggers on the top of the cake to see if your crater is about the right size and shape, then set them aside again.
- Using a palette knife, paddle the rest of the buttercream evenly over the top of the cake and down its sides. Make sure that the edge of the excavated area is defined.
- Snap the ends from enough of the four-fingered chocolate wafer bars to follow the edge of the excavated area, then press them into the buttercream. Now fix the rest of the whole fingers around the side of the cake.
- Crumble the cake that you removed in step 6, to make the soil. Part-fill the excavated hole with the soil, adding a few sugar-coated chocolate buttons in various colors. Position the diggers on top and put some soil and multicolored chocolate buttons into their buckets.
- Fill a lorry or dump truck with more crumbs and multicolored chocolate buttons, and let some of the soil and spill over the edge of the cake and the broken chocolate wafer bars
- Use the marker to write your message on the card and draw some diagonal black lines. Cut the straight part of the straw into two equal pieces, then fix these to the back of the card with tape to make a sign. Position the sign at the back of the cake.
