A Weekend of Baking...Chocoholic and lemon jelly!

My latest cake commission was for two birthday cakes for a party, one was for a certified chocoholic, and the other was for a lover of jelly sweets. I drew out two a couple of designs for each style to give a choice and the customer chose lemon drizzle with a jelly sweet core, and a chocolate fudge cake with a chocolate finger and chocolate decoration.

I have used my lemon drizzle recipe for a few cakes, and have always been pleased with it, however it usually is quite a dense cake, which makes it feel more like a madeira than a sponge cake. This time I decided to make it in the food processor, and was amazed at the rise! I managed to easily slice it into three layers, whilst retaining the lovely rich crumb.

Once cut into three I cut out the centres of two of the layers, sandwiched them together with lemon curd buttercream and filled the centre with a variety of jelly sweets. I then added a top layer and covered the whole cake with lemon curd buttercream.

There's a fantastic sweet shop in Milton Keynes shopping centre called Mr Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe filled with a fantastic variety of sweets, and I bought the decorations for the cake here. I used two long jelly snakes to wrap around the bottom, and a selection of jelly sweets and lollipops on the top.

I also made a mini cake from the cut out centre of the cake, filled and covered it with the lemon curd buttercream and covered it with the jelly sweets. 

I use my chocolate cake recipe every year to make my extra gooey Easter cake, so it was the perfect choice for a chocolate celebration cake. It always sinks slightly when cooling and has a lovely crisp top, but it sliced perfectly in half and was then filled with chocolate ganache buttercream (one of my favourite things to use on a cake!) and then the outside was covered with the rest. 

I used Cadbury's chocolate fingers around the outside of the cake, and then divided the top into quarters. I filled each quarter with a different sweet, such as Rolos, Chocolate buttons, peanut M&M's and Malteasers. It was very hard to box this up and send it on it's way, and I think I may have to make this one again and let it stay!