Last Monday was the second Cladenstine Cake Club of the year and as February was the month of Valentine’s day, the theme of the night was Pure Romance. I was super excited as with pure romance being the theme, surely there must be  must be some chocolate cake and also it gave me a chance to try out a cake I had never made before. 

A few took my fancy, from a  passion cake recipe by Sarah Cook to a chocolate and coconut layer cake but as soon as I saw the ‘I can’t believe you made that cake’ by Lorraine Pascale, I knew I had to give it a go. A two layered chocolate buttercream cake with raspberries or strawberries on top and lots of chocolate cigarillios round the outside, it looked beautiful.

There was more appeal in making it in that the recipe didn’t look too difficult. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients

• vegetable oil or oil spray
• 200g/7oz butter, softened
• 200g/7oz caster sugar
• 4 free-range eggs
• 140g/5oz plain flour
• 60g/2½oz cocoa powder
• pinch salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 400g/14oz plain, milk, or white chocolate cigarillos (about 75–80 in total) This are usually bought online so if you can’t get them in time you can use chocolate fingers or matchsticks instead

For the buttercream

• 250g/9oz butter, softened
• 500g/1lb 2oz icing sugar
• 100g/3½oz good dark chocolate (at least 70 per cent cocoa solids), melted and slightly cooled

For the decoration

• strawberries or raspberries

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180/C/350F/Gas 4 and line a 20cm/8in round deep cake tin with baking paper and brush or spray with oil.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar in a large bowl until they begin to go pale. Add half of the eggs and half of the flour and mix well.

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