Mum's Birthday

It was my mum's birthday on last Friday but we were up at the cottage so we decided to have a family party at our house on Wednesday.  The girls wanted to get some balloons for Nana, so we celebrated in style.  Nana, Papa, and Grandma, came over for a dinner.  J made a lovely salmon dinner using the salmon he and Fletcher caught on the week of fishing that J won in a raffle.

Crazy Nana playing with the balloons.

So since it was mum's birthday I had to make a cake.  I didn't have time to make a fancy cake, so I pulled out delicious instead.  Mum had chosen a chocolate cake and chocolate icing, so I decided to add a bit of espresso powder to the icing to make a mocha icing.  

German Chocolate Cake

Adapted The Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook

1-4oz sweet baking chocolate, chopped

1 1/2 cups milk

3/4 cup butter

4 eggs

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 3/4 cups sugar

2 tsp vanilla

*In a small saucepan, combine milk and chocolate.  Cook over low heat until melted and cool.

*Grease bottom of 2-9" round pans and line with parchment and then grease and flour bottom and sides.

*Preheat oven 350*

*Beat sugar and butter together, until the butter becomes slightly fluffy and lighter in colour.

*Scrape the sides of the bowl and then add eggs one at a time.

*Add chocolate mixture and dry ingredients to butter mixture, spread batter evenly between pans.

*Bake 35-40 minutes until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Mocha Fudge Frosting

adapted from Joy of Baking.com

4oz unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped

1 cup butter, room temp

320g (2 2/3cup) icing sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp espresso powder

*melt chocolate and bring to room temp.

*In an electric mixer whip the butter and then add the icing and espresso powder.  Once the icing sugar is combined then add the chocolate and the vanilla.  Whip until light and fluffy.

I didn't get any pictures of the process, I was too busy trying to get Rosie to sleep and trying to keep Ladybug busy which took a lot of effort.  I was running out of time, and I had promised to take the kids to the book store after R's nap and R took an extra hour to get to sleep.  Busy day.

Again I almost missed taking picture of the cake.  You might not be able to tell but that is only half a cake :)  the rest was delicious (which seems to a word that I am using a lot of right now)

Isn't it lovely,  chocolatey goodness.  The icing was a bit less fudgey since I added more butter and icing sugar without increasing the chocolate.  I didn't have time to melt more and I had already run out of unsweetened baking chocolate but it was still tasty.