Happy Birthday to Me.... The Weekly Bake Off

Originally Posted on Breadsticklers 29/01/2012

It was my birthday this week, I had just received my copy of Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to join in with The Weekly Bake Off.

I found out about the weekly bake off a couple of weeks ago through another blog I follow. It seemed like a really cute idea, every week there is a new bake from the book (only £4 on Amazon... bargain!) the bake is announced on Monday and everyone has to submit a picture of their bake by Sunday via twitter @WeeklyBakeOff. Each bake is judged (sometimes there is a guest judge) and a winner is announced! It's great to see how other people have fared and each person's own interpretation of the bake.

I let it slip that it was my first time taking part and that whatever the bake was that week was going to ultimately end up being my birthday cake! So the lovely organiser (Amy) of the Weekly Bake Off said she would dedicate this bake off to me *blushes* and the bake for this week would be Divine Chocolate Birthday Cake.

If you haven't got the book the recipe is posted online here.

I didn't follow the recipe to the letter... instead of adding coffee granules (I don't like coffee) I just mixed some cocoa with a teaspoon of vanilla essence to make it EXTRA chocolatey! Also the recipe recommends you use 39% cocoa solid plain chocolate for the icing... well, I couldn't find 39% in my crappy local supermarket (they don't even sell buttermilk!) so I had to make do with 44%. Every thing was laid out on the work tops ready for me to ice it... a couple of hours later I returned to find that some cheeky unknown person within my household had decided to have a nibble of my chocolate. The only thing I had in the cupboard was some milk chocolate, so my icing has about 10% milk chocolate in it too....

The edges of my cake weren't the neatest and I tried to neaten them up with the icing but in a cold kitchen it sets very quickly!

As it was my birthday I decided to add a bit of sparkle with gold and silver balls with matching candles.

So this is my bake!

First stage....

Miss a few...

Cake in the pan ready for the preheated oven...

Et Voila!

For my first flourless cake I think it turned out rather well. The book says the cake should be 'fudgey' in consistency and I feel it is, I probably need to work on my decorating skills however! Tastes yummy... so yummy that I had to have a piece whilst writing this post!

I'm looking forward to the many more weekly bake offs!

UPDATED: The results came out 30.01.2012... and I won! Whoooooop!!!