Chocolate Diet Coke Cake

I have a friend who's obsessed (aka addicted) to Diet Coke. I can't remember the last time I saw her without a bottle and so I thought it would be perfect to make her a Diet Coke themed (it's not actually Diet Coke flavoured, I looked into that and it all seemed a bit bleurghh) birthday cake. Although locating a cake tin that wasn't round in my overflowing baking cupboard was slightly harder than expected, I thought the cake turned out rather well :)

Once again I used my trusty childrens cookbook recipe, doubled:

Ingredients:

6oz self raising flour

2oz cocoa powder

8oz unsalted butter, softened

8oz caster sugar

4 eggs

2 tsp baking powder

a few drops of vanilla essence

6oz softened unsalted butter

12oz icing sugar

milk

cocoa powder

red food colouring, white chocolate buttons and malteasers

Method:

1.  Preheat the oven to 180C and line rectangular tin with greaseproof paper (you can grease and flour it obvs but mine had also been used for roasting potatoes so I thought greaseproof paper was a better option!)

2. Cream together butter and sugar, ensuring the butter is smooth

3. Sieve in flour, cocoa powder and baking powder, stir in slightly and then add eggs and vanilla essence.

4. Stir in with a wooden spoon and then beat with an electric whisk for a few minutes until it drops off the spoon, add milk if it's too stiff.

5. Pour into prepared tin and bake for approx 30 minutes, depending on the size of your tin and the predictability of your oven!

6. When cooked it should spring up when pressed, be coming away from the sides a bit and if you insert a skewer it should come out clean.

7. Leave it for a few minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool

Then for the cutting and the icing which was the most exciting part for this cake!

First of all I cut the cake. I would have put it on a cake board but all mine were very christmas orientated, so a greaseproof paper covered piece of cardboard had to suffice. I put the whole square cake on the board, and drew a stencil of my shape that I then cut around:

(the cake is actually underneath that!)

The best thing about this cake is that there's so much extra cake that you cut off to nibble on, I had such good intentions of making cake pops but after 8 hours of baking (I made this and the union jack cake in one day) I decided that eating it was a much better option!

After cutting and recutting it I made a basic buttercream recipe:

1. Cream the softened butter until it has a smooth consistency 

2. Sieve in the icing sugar a bit at a time, mixing inbetween each go.

3. Add a few drops of milk to achieve the desired consistency. 

I then split the mixture into 3, with a tiny bit for the red writing and then a bigger amount for the white label and then the rest for the chocolate. 

I added cocoa to the biggest one, I do this purely on taste by adding a few spoonfuls, mixing it and then getting various family members (I don't trust my judgement as in my view it can always be more chocolatey) to decided whether it needs more cocoa. 

I add red food colouring to the smallest one to make the writing, I didn't make it bright red because I didn't want to affect the taste although in hindsight I could have made it much redder.

I add a few drops of vanilla extract to the middle one although not too much as it's not the main flavour.

I then put the white icing on first, at the very top to make the cap and through the middle to make the label:

 I filled in everywhere else with chocolate icing and reconstructed the slightly misshapen base with the extra cake and lots of icing. I put the red icing in a piping bag with a small nozzle and wrote seventeen in what I thought would look like the coke writing however my artistic skills aren't exactly top notch. 

I put white chocolate buttons on the side of the cake where the white icing was, and on the very top and wanted to edge the icing with them but due to some sneaky eating by my brother I ran out. So improvising with what I could find I cut malteasers in half and edged it with that so in the end, after tidying up and smoothing out it looked like this:

I then wrote a message on the left hand side of the board and voila :) Transporting it to school was a slight mission, but it was worth it! 

- Ellie x