A birthday cake for Zenna

As I have mentioned a few times in this blog, I have a little boy, Reuben. He's two and a half and I love him to bits (although he can throw a mean tantrum that really tests my unconditional love at times). Reuben's best friend is a lovely little girl named Zenna. They are so adorable playing together and it's so much fun watching them interact (not so much fun watching them fight, but you take the good with the bad). While they are young, I love that Reuben has a girl for his best friend. I get to play little girl games and on occasions get to shop for gorgeous little girl things. I might change my tune in 15 years when they start wanting to play by themselves with the door shut, but that's a blog post for another day.

Last weekend was Zenna's third birthday party. When baking for family, I don't get to do anything too pretty and generally avoid pink. So when I was told Zenna was having a party, I muscled my way in and offered to do some baking. Luckily, we're friends with Zenna's parents and they were more than happy for the help. So, I baked :-). Zenna's Mum, Natika, has a fantastic eye for style and has a great business called Indi Lola Designs. ILDs did all the styling in the below pictures, and you can buy similar items for yourself.

ENJOY! 

Zenna’s Neapolitan Birthday Cake

From Miette cookbook

Chocolate cake

55g 70% chocolate

1 cup boiling water

215g plain flour

75g cocoa powder

1.5 tsp bi-carb soda

A pinch of salt

1 cup buttermilk

2 large eggs at room temperature

½ cup vegetable oil

425g caster sugar

In a bowl, break the chocolate into bits and pour over the boiling water. Whisk until melted then set aside to cool.

Butter a cake tin and line the base with baking paper. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees celsius.

Sift the flour, cocoa, salt, bi-carb and baking powder into bowl and set aside.

In a clean bowl, beat the eggs on high speed until they are foamy. Reduce the speed to low and pour in the oil, whisking until combined, then raise the speed to medium for about 30 seconds. Reduce the speed to low and pour in the chocolate mixture and beat until combined. Then pour in the buttermilk and vanilla and whisk. Add the sugar and beat until the batter is smooth (it will be very wet).

Pour in the sifted dry ingredients and fold through with a wooden spoon. Do not over mix, but try to ensure the mixture isn’t lumpy.

Pour into prepared tin and bake in the oven for about 45 to 55 minutes, or until a skewer can be inserted and comes out clean. When ready, let stand in the tin for about 15 minutes, then remove from tin and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

Vanilla cake

225g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

A pinch of salt

200g unsalted butter, at room temperature

225g caster sugar

10 large egg yolks, at room temperature

2/3 cup buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla extract

Butter 2 cake tins and line base with baking paper. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.

Sift together flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and set aside. In another bowl, whisk together the buttermilk and the vanilla extract and set aside.

In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light in colour and fluffy. Add the egg yolks in three additions, beating each set until combined. Turn the beater on to low and add half the dry ingredients, the buttermilk, then the second half of the dry ingredients. Beat each as you go, but make sure not to over beat. Pour half the mixture onto one of the prepared cake tines. Add two or three drops of pink/red food colouring into the remainder of the mixture and stir. Pour into the second cake tin. Pop both cakes into the oven and cook for about 35 minutes, or until a skewer can be inserted and comes out clean. When ready, let stand in the tin for about 15 minutes, then remove from tin and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

Buttercream

Follow recipe from this previous post. At the end, don't add the champagne and instead add a few drops of pink/red food colouring and beat until combined.

Assemble

Using a sharp knife, cut the vanilla and pink cakes through the middle. Trim down the chocolate cake to be just thicker than the half cakes. Place a vanilla layer on the base. Spread a thin layer of buttercream over the top then top with a pink layer. Lightly press down then spread another thin layer of buttercream on top. Continue this with the chocolate layer, another pink layer and a vanilla layer, with buttercream in between each. Finally top with buttercream and fill in the layers around the edge. Smooth with a pallet knife and pipe some decorations around the edge on the top. Serve and try not to die from pure cake bliss.

 For cupcake recipe, check out this post (excluding the curd). For the cookie recipe, check out this post.