Father's Day and an old favourite

Today I have made a cake for my dad for Father's Day. Obviously it was supposed to be for tomorrow but as the family are over today we are celebrating in advance.

I wanted to try a cake I have seen , called a Blackout cake. It is basically a chocolate cake layered with a chocolate pastry cream and then covered in cake crumbs. I did my own take on it instead by covering the outside of the cake in grated chocolate.

The cakes are a bog standard chocolate recipe but the cream is a recipe I haven't used before. Made with cocoa powder, sugar, water, vanilla, butter and cornflour. It is a cheats chocolate pastry cream ( no eggs!) and once cooled it spreads beautifully and tastes pretty good too.

I followed the recipe and the quantities were far too much for decorating the cake so I have loads left over, but no worries I have a great recipe to use it on. More on that later.

So this is the finished cake. I'm hoping it goes down well.