Some time ago, I saw an image of a birthday cake (I can’t remember where now sadly) and I have been longing for an excuse to re-create it in my own style.

The cake basically was decorated with chocolate bars, but in a way that it looked like they were exploding from the cake.

A friend of mine was attending a dinner party I was going to and as it was also her birthday, I brought along this cake as a surprise!

I made 1.5 times the Victoria sponge recipe below and flavoured it with cocoa powder and baked into three layers, sandwiched and topped with chocolate buttercream. Then, surrounded with Matchmakers ( but you could use chocolate scrolls or cigarellos for this), surrounded by a ring of Maltesers, and topped with an explosion of chocolate bars and Thornton’s Continental chocolates.

Victoria Sponge

Print recipe

Ingredients

• 4 Eggs (large)
• 225g Self-Raising Flour
• 225g Caster Sugar
• 225g Unsalted Butter
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

Directions

1.	Cream together the butter and sugar until light, fluffy and pale.
2.	Beat the eggs with the vanilla extract and add to the mixture a little at a time
3.	Sift the flour and baking powder together then gently fold into the mixture
4.	Separate the mixture into 2 greased and lined sandwiched tins
5.	Bake each layer at 180°C / 350°F / Gas 4 for 20-25 mins until the top is lightly golden, or a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean
6.	Once cooled, sandwich with jam and dust with icing sugar