A cake for a double digit.

My son had this idea for his 10th birthday, yesterday. He was very clear about it. He wanted a coiled snake and suggested this could be achieved by baking cakes in different sized tins. The smaller cake could sit on the larger one, and a smaller one again on that, except that I pointed out I was limited to two sizes of cake tins only in my cupboard.

He’s a creative thinker, a lover of reptiles and amphibians and very encouraging and complimentary of my efforts which helps a lot as I was nervous of making a complete hash of it.

The cake was a simple recipe. I weighed 4 eggs in their shells first and then used weighed out butter, sugar and flour to the same weight as the eggs.

Having creamed the sugar and butter together, beaten in the eggs and flour I then divided the mixture into two. To one I added vanilla essence, to the other I added a couple of generous dessert spoons of cocoa powder. I then spooned in a bit of each flavour alternatively into two cake tins so that the chocolate and vanilla flavours would cook together as one sponge cake but not mix completely. The resulting effect is a ‘marble cake‘. Not only was I pleased with the snake-like curlicues that appeared, the fact that eight or so 9 and 10 year olds were ‘dead’ impressed, but also that the flavours remained distinct from one another. Some bites were more chocolatey or more vanilla, some a good mix of both.

I made a jam and butter icing (with a bit of cream cheese) filling and covered the whole thing in ready-rolled white icing. My son moulded the snake’s head and tail and I painted and decorated the whole cake using food colourings to create a ‘wash’ of colour, and food colouring pens for the details.

It’s a a big relief when a plan works.