Heavenly Chocolate Cake

I had a play with my new marco lens whilst I was constructing the cake

I made myself a birthday cake last weekend (not quite as sad and lonely as it sounds; I'd rather have fun baking than buy one). It was a Mary Berry recipe called Heavenly Chocolate Cake and it was indeed fairly heavenly tasting, if I do say so myself, but it wasn't so heavenly to make.

It involved splitting egg yolks and whites (I can't remember ever having to do this without adult supervision but I managed it without loads of shell going in the mixture, bonus), melting chocolate and butter before mixing it with the other ingredients, and 'folding' the mixture. I know egg whites need to be folded but surely cakes are normally 'throw everything in one bowl' recipes! I ended up creating about 3 times the amount of washing up I usually do; the dishwasher was so full I even had to wash things by hand, wtf! ;)

The middle of the sponge was nice and fluffy

It was delicious in the end, especially with the addition of some M&S giant buttons (which were even gianter than your typical giant buttons!), but I'll read a recipe through next time before I embark on doing it in case it involves all sorts of trickery like this one!

Humongous buttons! 

The recipe said to cook for 50mins,
I did it for 40 and I still managed to burn the edges a tad! 

Look how close my new lens can get, you can almost taste the sponge! I'm so in love with it. 

I baked more chocolatey cakes this weekend as well (more on that later); there is a bit of a running theme when it comes to baking in my kitchen. What can I say? I was raised as a chocoholic and those habits are hard to grow out off!

xXx