My Baking Diary - Moist Chocolate Cake with White Choc Topping

This is my 1st time baking an actual-sized cake! Since I've done cupcakes numerous times, I thought it'll be good to try out my hands on an actual-sized cake for Gloria's popo's birthday. I've been staying in the same house with her since the beginning of last year. It would be lovely if I can actually bake her a cake for her birthday!

Updated 31 Mar 2012 - The final touched-up cake :D

I'm EXTREMELY pleased! The cake was a winner! Moist chocolate cake that's not so sweet, topped with sweet white chocolate shavings & sweet-sourish fresh strawberries - awesomeness! Combination of soft + moist + crunchy + sweet + sourish = PerutBesi's 1st proper cake!

The successful moist chocolate cake - YUMS!

I was quite worried when the batter looked more "watery"/liquid-ish than my usual cupcake ones, but I just went ahead to bake the cake anyhow. It turned out superb in texture & taste! Pretty much just the way I wanted! Hurray!

Quite liquid-ish batter

I wasn't too hopeful but had that glimmer of hope that it'll turn out alright - and it did! Thank You, God!

So for the icing & topping, white chocolate shavings came to mind since I had a block of white chocolate. I had to have some "cream" to get the white chocolate shavings to stick, so I did up a simple buttercream just to be the "sticking agent" for the white chocolate. I actually used the "fruit peeler" to shave my white chocolate :D I'm gonna finish the cake's deco with strawberries right before serving to preserve freshness of the fruit :D I'm PLEASED!

Hand-whipped some buttercream as "sticking agent"

Covered the cake with white chocolate shavings :D

I think the cake will look quite pretty once I add the strawberries! Red, white & chocolate-brown...ah, lovely!!

My initial plan was to have the cake looking just like those from the shops where there's cream in between (I've to cut the cake into half & put it back together). I also wanted to coat the sides of the cake with cream & cover it with toasted nuts at the bottom & the white chocolate shavings at the upper end of the sides.

I couldn't get my "vision" accomplished this time :( I didn't have proper tools & utensils to get it done. No cake box. No cake tray to place the cake just like in cake shops. I just didn't plan to bake actually, thus I didn't buy.

Oh well, home-baked looking cake, straight from the heart :) *love*

Here's the recipe to share:

For the moist chocolate cake

Recipe taken from Just Easy Recipes :D

Directions to prepare the batter & bake the cake

I usually snap photos of the recipes that I find online & head downstairs to bake :)

Recipe for the icing

I didn't put the cocoa powder as I wanted it to be a plain buttercream kinda icing. I just needed a "sticking agent", not a proper icing per se. Heh. Improvising is something I do really often...

Hope you enjoyed this post! Stay tuned with PerutBesi!


Made with much love,