***Cutest Cake I Ever Baked***

My love for baking started a very long time ago. Each time I visit a bakery, used to wonder how these beautiful cakes were baked and looked so perfect. My mom never baked so always thought it was difficult and couldn't make one at home. Later on when I was on my own and into experimenting all kinds of cooking, did some research on baking. Started trying out different kinds of cakes, realized it was not so tough. Now I am all into baking and cake decoration.

About 2 weeks back we got an invite for a baby shower of our friends Mary and Ruben. They are having a baby boy. We wanted to do something special for them and it was Briji's idea to bake a cake with the little baby boy theme. We got excited on the project and did a lot of research. Finally Briji came up with a beautiful design for the cake and I was all set to make it.

The design had little baby shoes and a blanket. The cake was designed to reflect a messy baby :). The color scheme was blue since its a boy. The flavor was chocolate with chocolate whipped cream filling. The filling was three layer.

The difficult part was to get the little shoes done. We made the template for the shoes first. The material used to make the shoes were gumpaste and fondant. It took me more that 2 hrs to make the shoes and was so amazed by the result. They looked stunning. It was the photo session for the shoes. Briji wouldnt let go of them.

Assembling the rest of the cake was easy. I am posting here just the chocolate cake recipe. Will be giving a detailed description of the shoe making and the icing in another posting. So stay tuned for that one.

Chocolate cake

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup All purpose flour
2 cups Sugar
3/4 cup Cocoa powder
2 teaspoon Baking soda
1 teaspoon Salt
2 Eggs
1 cup Milk
1/2 cup Oil
2 teaspoon Vanilla essence
1 cup Boiling water

Method:

-Preheat the oven at 350 degree and prepare the pan.
- Mix in all the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cocoa, salt and baking soda) in a bowl.
- To this add the wet ingredients starting with the eggs. Mix well. Pour in the boiling water last and blend well with a mixer.
- Pour the cake batter into the pan and bake it for 1 hour or until a toothpick is inserted and comes out clean.
- Cool the cake before decorating or cutting it.

This is a basic chocolate recipe. This cake is also yum to eat with ice cream.

Final cake....

Mary and Ruben loved this cake and we were happy. Congratulations to them and also wish them a wonderful parenthood.