My little girl just had a birthday; and of course no birthday celebration is complete without a cake topped with birthday candles to wish on before they are extinguished in one (or a few) puffs, which concurrently blankets the cake with tiny droplets of birthday girl germs. But we digress… let them eat cake. Germs are everywhere. Besides, this cake is bulletproof! It’s covered with homemade marshmallow fondant which no one likes to eat anyway. I just peel mine right off and get to the good stuff: 4-layers of moist chocolate cake, devil’s frosting, and french vanilla frosting just under the peel, err… fondant.
I’m definitely not a fondant fan, but I must admit that certain cake requests (like this Shopkins cake) does require edible modeling clay to achieve that smooth, plastic look of a toy. Most of my cakes are covered in buttercream or whipped cream, but I made an exception for this one since I didn’t think tinted buttercream would look as nice as fondant would.
My little princess got 2 birthday parties! One on her actual birthday with family, including grandma who was in town, and her second party with a little group of friends at our humble home for a night of pizza, “Snow White” the movie, popcorn, and cake, followed by a spontaneous game of balloon war; organized chaos at it’s best!
So lucky mommy (yes, that’d be me) got to bake a cheesecake for her family party and this cute Shopkins cake for her party with her friends and I’m going to share my Shopkins cake construction process.
Little princess wanted a chocolate cake, so little princess got a chocolate cake for her special day. I used Toba Garrett’s chocolate cake recipe from her book “The Well-decorated Cake” and I promise it’s the BEST chocolate cake you will ever taste! She claims it’s good to the last crumb, and believe me, it is! For the filling, I made a HUGE mistake and accidentally made chocolate icing!!! Like the kind that you drizzle over desserts for the nice chocolate-spilling-over-the-edge look, and that doesn’t work for a cake filling unless you want a “Sleeping Beauty” type of cake look with all the layers sliding and frosting dripping and the whole cake leaning like the Tower of Pisa. That’s why, my friends, we should stick to tried and true recipes when attempting a special cake for a special occasion. Lesson learned. SO, instead of dumping the chocolate icing, I just doctored it by adding more butter and powdered sugar and it was fixed! Now, I had delicious devil’s chocolate icing buttercream that was perfect layered with the chocolate cake.
After that detour, I decided I didn’t want to risk the dark brown color of chocolate frosting possibly showing through the light yellow fondant so whipped up a batch of our favorite vanilla frosting, which is also found in Toba Garrett’s book (see above link) called French Vanilla Buttercream. This buttercream tastes like vanilla ice cream and has a texture that’s lighter and in between a buttercream and whipped cream. Definitely one of my go-to recipes and have used it in many of my past cakes.
She loved her little party and was so excited she kept hugging me and telling me ‘thank you’. That’s what makes my Saturday spent on a birthday cake, all worth it!
Eating a slice or two of cake helps, too.
Chocolate Fudge Cake
adapted from Toba Garrett’s “The Well Decorated Cake”
Ingredients
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
- 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup Dutch processed cocoa powder
- 2 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 large eggs, room temp.
- 1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 2 1/4 cups buttermilk
- 6 oz. melted semisweet chocolate (good quality), melted
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and parchment line two 8″ cake pans (2″ high). Melt chocolate, set aside.
- Beat butter and sugars together on med- low speed until fluffy.
- Mix together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt together in a separate bowl, set aside
- Add eggs into the butter mixture, scraping bowl as needed. Add vanilla.
- Add in a third of the flour mixture, mix. then a half of the buttermilk. Mix and scrape bowl. Repeat until you have ended with the rest of your flour mixture. Scrape bowl.
- Add in your melted chocolate and beat on med-high until well mixed. Scraping bowl as needed.
- Pour into your prepared cake pans and bake in preheated oven for about 50 mins or until toothpick comes out clean.
- Cool in pan for 10 mins then remove carefully onto cooling rack.
- Frost cake after completely cool.
Good luck with your baking adventure! Thank you for reading and please subscribe!
-Flora