I’m all about cakes right now. Small cakes, big cakes, complicated cakes, simple cakes, cup cakes and cakes that make you happy by just looking at them. It helps if they make you happy when you’re eating them also so I’m having fun working on all sorts of tasty recipes that will make their way on to this site over the coming weeks and months.

And so, as part of Chocolate Week here at Cherry Menlove I have a cake for you. It’s a wonderfully rich, fairly large, soft and tasty cake. It is drenched in butter-cream icing, both inside and out, and although you won’t want to be eating this every day as a snack it is great to make for a special occasion.

Note : As each layer of this cake requires baking separately this cake will take a little longer to bake than most, but boy, is it worth it!

Click here for our cooking and baking weight conversion chart

For the cake:

Start by pre-heating your oven to 190c

• Blend together 150g butter and 150g sugar in a large mixing bowl until it is creamy.
• Sift in 230g flour and 100g cocoa and then add 30ml milk, 3 eggs and 1/4 tsp salt and mix until all the ingredients are blended.
• Grease the cake tin and pour the cake mix in, ensuring that the base of the tin is covered evenly with the mixture.
• Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes.
• Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely before removing from the cake tin.

Repeat all the above twice more so you are left with three cakes. THREE CAKES I TELL YOU. LIFE DOESN’T GET BETTER THAN WHEN YOU HAVE THREE CAKES VISIT ALL AT ONCE!!!

*ahem*

For the filling and topping:

• In an electric mixer, mix together the butter, icing sugar, vanilla and water until it is soft, fluffy and white. (As the quantities for this filling are quite large, you may need to mix the butter icing in two batches.)
• Using a pallet knife cover the top of the first layer of cake in the butter-cream icing.
• Sandwich the second layer on top, pushing down firmly.
• Cover the top of the second layer in butter cream.

• Then do the same for the third and final layer.
• You don’t have to worry about being too neat and tidy with this process. Just cover as much of the top of cake as you can. making sure that the layers have enough ‘cement’ to stick together firmly as this will keep the structure of the cake in place.

• Use what is left of the butter-cream icing to cover the sides of the cake until the whole thing is completely covered.

• Try not to let the butter cream icing set for  too long before adding your M&M’s. You need it to be soft in order to be able to poke the M & M’s in to place.
• I added mine in rows around the side of the cake and used a spiral pattern for the top, but you could use any pattern you like. Be free. Enjoy M & M’ing your cake until your heart is singing and content.

And then you can eat it.

Last Saturday my Dad held what we call in our family as a ‘Dig Day’. It is a day when all of the men folk get together at my parent’s house and help my Dad to build the second half of their house. It’s a day full of brick dust, banging with hammers, wheelbarrows full of rubble and general ‘man stuff’. All a bit embarrassing to be honest as they all don their macho persona’s for the day, knock a few walls down, and then moan for the next week about how achy they are after it.

My mum, sister and I take the opportunity to go shopping when they have a day such as this and you never hear a peep from us after all that, let me tell you!!

Anyway, I took this cake and gave it to the men to devour while they were being all manly last Saturday. It was big enough to cope with the copious amounts of tea that were drunk and went down very well. But it would also be just as at home at a child’s birthday party or some other sort of celebration for someone you really, really liked.

Although I will warn you to keep very small children away from the cake. We left this cake on the coffee table at my parent’s for a little too long on Saturday and came back in to the room to find that Truly, my sister’s small daughter, had taken her tiny finger and pushed all of the M & M’s deep in to the cake.

One. By. One.

I loved her even more than I thought was possible after that.

And do you want to know why?

Because I would have done EXACTLY the same thing as that when I was small. Um, well I would have done it up until about two years ago to be honest.

I’ll be back tomorrow with the next entry from my pregnancy diary.

Do any Mum’s out there know what I mean when I say I’d like to skip the next few weeks and head straight to the labor ward?

You do?

I thought so.

Lots of love,
Cherry

Click here for day one of chocolate week

Click here for day two of chocolate week

Click here for day four of chocolate week

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Cherry Menlove

Related posts:

1. How To Make A Halloween Cake For The Kids
2. Cranberry & Lemon Cake Recipe
3. How To Make Chocolate And Orange Halloween Cupcakes
4. Cherry’s Classically Simple Fruit Cake
5. How To Make Toasted Almond Layered Cream Fingers

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