“Can you bake me a cake, I´m hosting a dinner party on Saturday?” my sister asked me last week. I shouted (almost too quickly) Yes! for I knew what kind of cake she wanted. I knew that it had to be chocolate cake with chocolate swiss meringue buttercream – ideally the same cake that I made for my dad’s 70th birthday party. My sister is a product designer and it’s so much fun working with her on designing cakes and parties. She told me that she wanted a cake similar to one that I made for the grown ups at my younger son’s first birthday party, except she wanted different colours.

I made one batch of this delicious cake and I divided the batter into four 8″ pans. This is the swiss meringue buttercream recipe that I used, but I added 5 oz of melted dark chocolate to the buttercream. The melted chocolate on top of the cake is white candy melts from Wilton. I coloured the candy melts with red and purple gel food colouring and Flo-coat. I then baked this meringue recipe, except I used vanilla flavouring instead of liquorice powder. The gold I used to decorate with is from Mill & Mortar.