This is the birthday cake I always dreamt of having as a kid, the one the Kate Miller\u2019s and Tina Wallace\u2019s of the world got to have at their birthdays. I\u2019m talking the classic yellow vanilla cake with a chocolate frosting that\u2019s brown enough to know that it\u2019s going to taste really chocolatey, but not so dark it veers into grown-up territory.<\/p>\n
As for me, Mum always made her\u00a0Japanese strawberry shortcake, which I absolutely love now. But as a kid, I just wanted what everyone else had \u2013 chocolate frosting and sprinkles.<\/p>\n
Anyway, it all worked out. I grew up to be a half-decent cook, so now my birthday cake can be whatever I want. And this is it!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This Birthday Cake is made with three layers of my classic\u00a0Vanilla Cake\u00a0frosted with\u00a0My Favourite Chocolate Frosting\u00a0which honestly does taste like chocolate mousse. It is\u00a0way<\/em>\u00a0less sweet and butter-dense than buttercream, so you won\u2019t feel ill after treating yourself to a large slice of this cake. Here\u2019s a little more about both so you can decide if this is The Birthday Cake for you too.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve used my beloved\u00a0Vanilla Cake\u00a0for this Birthday Cake because it has a soft, buttery crumb that is much plusher than typical yellow cakes. The real clincher is that it stays perfectly fresh for up to 4 days, making it ideal as a make-ahead cake for occasions like birthdays, when you\u2019ve got plenty else to juggle. Present wrapping! Party food!<\/p>\n This is a frosting I created chasing the perfect all-rounder, and I\u2019ve been hiding it from you for a few years (sorry!). I describe it as a cross between\u00a0buttercream\u00a0and\u00a0whipped ganache\u00a0except it\u2019s considerably less sweet and not as rich as either of these with less than one-third the sugar and 40% less fat than the equivalent volume of buttercream.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \ud83e\udd13\u00a0Baking experts<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 it is almost a dead ringer for cr\u00e8meux or an enriched chocolate cr\u00e8me p\u00e2tissi\u00e8re (pastry cream), except this is not custard based ie. no eggs.<\/p>\n It has a texture and flavour like\u00a0chocolate mousse, just a little creamier, as you\u2019d expect from a frosting. It has terrific chocolate flavour from using both melted chocolate and cocoa, and it\u2019s the right brown colour (seriously, it\u2019s a thing: too light suggests lack of chocolate flavour, very dark = grown up bittersweet chocolate).<\/p>\n It is completely smooth, feels indulgent and rich, but in a lighter way, so even a cupcake piled high with frosting doesn\u2019t tip into too-much territory. For context, a typical 3-layer buttercream cake can take around 500g butter and 1 kg icing sugar \u2026\u2026.. which is exactly why I keep coming back to this frosting instead, especially for multi-layer cakes!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is the birthday cake I always dreamt of having as a kid, the one the Kate Miller\u2019s and Tina…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justread-clone.a.grastyup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justread-clone.a.grastyup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justread-clone.a.grastyup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justread-clone.a.grastyup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justread-clone.a.grastyup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/justread-clone.a.grastyup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9,"href":"https:\/\/justread-clone.a.grastyup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions\/9"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justread-clone.a.grastyup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justread-clone.a.grastyup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justread-clone.a.grastyup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justread-clone.a.grastyup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}1. about the vanilla sponge cake<\/h3>\n
2. about my favourite chocolate frosting<\/h3>\n