Since becoming a fully-fledged magazine food blogger; my reputation as being a food lover has fast grown. It was my youngest nephew's second birthday this month and here is the outcome of my first EVER attempt at a birthday cake. We had to travel three hours by car to get to my sister's house and unfortunately the front of the cake got quite bashed and fell apart but here (above) is the final picture before it got demolished by hungry little monsters and big ones too...

Overall these kind of cakes take time - time for the cakes to bake (in my case wait for the first cake to be baked as I only have ONE cake tin!?!? And then bake the second after that) and then cool; then freeze; then make the buttercream (i'm a firsthander at making this) and decorate; but the most challenging part was making the front train look like a train! Mine started off looking more like a boat ;) With some emergency chopping I managed to get it looking more like one but still not perfect. I decorated the cake and then my mum and dad and I set off to Cambridge where along the way the front got totally ruined; again with some quick-thinking and reapplying of smarties and smoothing over of the buttercream the cake was (kind of) restored. Except it looked less train like and red buttercream was smudged over the smoke and wheels and smartie train decoration.

No matter: the cake tasted good and the kids loved that there was so much of it that they could munch their way through (bit like the hungry caterpillar they were!).

Meaning good results; despite the mishaps - woop woop!

Next time I'll be much more prepared and hopefully better all round.

For the chocolate cake I used: 

5 spoons Cadbury cocoa drinking powder

3 eggs

4 oz flour

4 oz caster sugar

4 oz butter

Until next the cake baking adventure!