Dad's Birthday cake

I said I would upload some pics of my dad's cake so here they are!

I followed a very simple recipe from delicious magazine for this chocolate fudge cake. I only own a small cake tin so I had lots of mixture left and decided to put it to good use and make some cupcakes with it. I added a few of them for decoration after dipping them in icing and coconut....yum! It tasted great, the only mistake i made was whisking the icing, it ended up as a ganache which actually turned out very well...phew! I'll stick to the original recipe next time and see how it turns out.

Here's how to do it:

Ingredients

100g spreadable butter, plus extra for greasing
250ml milk
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
100g plain chocolate, melted
15g cocoa powder, sifted
300g self-raising flour, sifted
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda, sifted
225g golden caster sugar
2 eggs
For the icing
225g plain chocolate, broken up
100g butter
142ml carton double cream

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/fan160C/gas 4. Grease a 20cm round, deep cake tin and line with baking paper. Mix the milk and vinegar. Place all the other cake ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Pour in the milk mixture and beat with an electric hand whisk, until smooth. Spread into the cake tin and bake for 1 hour, until firm in the centre. Cool for 10 minutes, then turn out on a rack to cool completely.
2. Meanwhile, make the icing. Melt the chocolate and butter together in the microwave for 3 minutes on medium, stirring halfway through. Alternatively, melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl over a pan of just simmering water. Stir until smooth, then beat in the cream. Cool slightly.
3. Halve the cake through the middle. Spread a quarter of the icing on 1 half and sandwich together. Spread the rest over the top and sides.

The cake will keep for up to 3 days in an airtight box.