Dads 50th Birthday cake...

Right so my dad's just made it to the big 'five-oh!'

So to make him feel a little bit better about that fact I thought I would make him an extra special cake to make him feel better about that fact!

So I really wanted to do the numbers, '5' and '0' a task indeed.

Being a little on the creative side I imagine how I would do it and base the recipe on my Chocolate Owl Cake one I did for my mums birthday (as I knew he liked that one!)

So the recipe is basically the same as the owl cake:

You will need:

For the vanilla sponge 

(PER SPONGE YOU WILL NEED 1 BIG ONE  AND 3 SMALLER )

So it may look like a lot but there is a lot of cake to make! 

• 700g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 700g caster sugar
• 12 large eggs, beaten
• 4 tsp vanilla extract
• 700g plain flour
• 10 tsp baking powder
• 8 tbsp milk, at room temperature

For the chocolate fudge frosting

• 700g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
• 500g unsalted butter
• 500ml milk
•   2tsp vanilla extract
• 900g icing sugar, sifted

For the decoration

• chocolate buttons, in different sizes
• chocolate vermicelli sprinkles

1. Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees or gas mark 4!

2. Mix together the cake mix - cream the butter and sugar to start.

3. Then add the eggs. Followed by flour but make sure this is sifted first.

4. Add the baking powder which will help the cake to rise.

5. Once you have a mixture, butter four cake tins and line with baking paper.

6. Divide the mixture into the four (one big tin and three smaller!) and put into the oven to bake for around half an hour.

7. The cakes will be light and bouncy once cooked.

8. The leave to cool for about ten minutes.

9. While the cake is cooling time to make the frosting!

10. In a bowl melt the butter and chocolate then in a separate bowl mix together the vanilla flavouring, icing sugar and milk.

NOW THIS IS WHERE IT GETS DIFFERENT FROM THE OWL CAKE RECIPE!

11. Cut the larger cake in half and spread over some frosting to one side - then sandwich together this is going to be the '0'...

12. Then take a metal egg ring and pierce through the middle of the cake to make the circle cut out. 

13. Then cover the top of the cake and sides in the frosting! Your '0' is the easy part and this is now complete and ready to decorate!

14. Now comes the tricky part... take two of the three sponges frost the center and sandwich together, now we create a template to cut around with a knife to make the bottom part of the '5' 

15. then cut in half the remaining cake frost center, and sandwich together to make the top shape as shown below.

16. Finally you need to cover the entire cake including the sides with the remaining frosting.

17. Then the fun part - using chocolate sprinkles and buttons (white and milk choc) decorate as you please.

The cake is finished! Happy birthday dad!