Chocolate sweets cake!

Last week I made a 18th birthday cake for a friend, and decided that I'd give a chocolate sweets/candy cake a try, which of course is any chocoholics dream cake. Surprisingly, this cake didn't take as long as I thought it would, and was quite fun to make and construct. I chose to use five types of chocolate sweets chocolate fingers for around the outside and to separate the other sweets, smarties, minstrels, malteasers and white chocolate buttons. However, you could use any sweets you like such as Kitkat, M&M's, Twix and rolo's.

For this cake I used a chocolate sponge, with a vanilla butter cream between the two layers. I then covered ('crumbed') the whole cake with chocolate butter cream to create a surface to stick the chocolate fingers to. I covered a cake board with white fondant icing and coloured spare fondant with blue gel food colouring.

Ingredients:

• 175g flour
• 175g sugar
• 175g butter
• 40g cocoa powder
• 75ml water

Buttercream

• 100g icing sugar
• 50g butter 
• 25g cocoa powder (for the chocolate icing)
• 1/2 teaspoon milk (if needed)

Method: 
For making cupcakes I just use a standard creaming method as I feel that this creates light, airy, spongy cakes. 
1. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius and line your tins with grease proof paper
2. Place the (softened) butter/margarine into a mixing bowl along with the sugar,and mix together with a wooden spoon until fully combined and of a creamy consistency.
3. Place the eggs into the bowl one at a time, mixing thoroughly between each egg.
 NOTE: Don't worry if the mixture curdles, this is due to the eggs being too cold but this does not effect the cakes in any way, once the flour is added it will go back to normal.

4. Mix the cocoa powder & water then add this along with the flour to the mixture. Fold in with a metal spoon until the ingredients are all combined.
5. Finally place the mixture into the tins. 
6. Place in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until they are cooked all the way through.

7. While the cakes are cooling mix the softened butter and icing together until smooth. When making the chocolate buttercream add the coca powder in at the same time as the flour.

Happy Baking!