Vanilla Bean Birthday Cake with Strawberry Milkshake and White Chocolate Buttercream

It was my birthday on September 1st.  I turned 25.  Definitely 25.  My brain was trying to convince me the couple of weeks leading up to it that I had already had my birthday and that I am, in fact, 26.  Clearly I am feeling old.  But no, I've only just turned 25.  I still feel a bit old though.

Anyway, as I said this time last year, I have made my own birthday cake since I was about 9/10 because I am terribly picky despite liking something very simple.  Last year I did diverge from the norm slightly, in that I made something that wasn't a vanilla cake, and whilst it was quite tasty it was not amazing and more-ish.  So this year I felt I was going to have to go back to being 'boring' and do a vanilla cake again.  I admit, I was a little disappointed with myself.  That is, until I had a brainwave!  Okay, I would make a vanilla cake but I would make it special!  I would treat myself to some vanilla beans and use the seeds to flavour it!  I have never used vanilla beans before, mainly because they were quite pricey.  The ones in the supermarket are usually £5 for one!  Two if you're lucky.  Plus there's no guarantee of quality when they are packaged inside a plastic tube.  You just have to hope you get a good one.  However, I happened to be browsing around on Amazon one day and decided to see if I could get beans through them.  Turns out I could and the ones I was looking at had very positive reviews.  Better yet, they cost £4.75, for ten. TEN!  Well obviously I jumped on that deal and I can tell you, I was not disappointed.  I had read that you can tell if a bean is not dried if it is easy to deseed.  The one I used in my baking was VERY easy to deseed and it was only my first time doing it too.  Very pleased with them indeed.

So I had my base cake planned.  As for the filling and outside, I decided to just pick flavours I had previously enjoyed; namely strawberry milkshake buttercream for the filling and white chocolate buttercream for the outside.  The chocolate dripping over the top was inspired by a picture I had seen on Pinterest.  Originally, it was going to be chocolate ganache but it just refused to turn out right, which was frustrating.  It is just two ingredients and the method is so simple and yet I cannot do it.  In the end I just could not be bothered to keep persisting with it.  It was my birthday after all and I prefer plain old melted chocolate anyway.

What can I say?  This cake tasted amazing!  Especially when you got a bite of all the component parts together.  The fiancé and I scoffed most of it quite happily.  It was just so good.  I was really pleased.  I was also quite chuffed with the final look, though I wish I'd not added the white decoration to the top and just left it as pink roses.  Never mind though.  I still got lots of compliments for it.

Recipe - Makes 1 x 15cm/6inch, four layer cake


Cake - adapted from a post on The Good Food Channel

• 3 eggs
• Caster sugar - weight equal to that of the 3 eggs in their shells
• Unsalted butter - weight equal to that of the 3 eggs in their shells
• Self raising flour - weight equal to that of the 3 eggs in their shells
• 1 vanilla bean

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4 and grease and line two 6inch/15cm round cake tins.
2. Separate the eggs and use a whisk to beat the egg whites until you get soft peaks.  Set aside.
3. Remove the seeds from the vanilla bean and put them in a large mixing bowl with the butter and sugar.  Mix until fluffy and pale in colour.
4. Whisk the egg yolks for about 3 minutes and then fold into the sugar butter.
5. Sift in the flour and fold that in also.
6. Add the egg whites and fold those in too until you cannot see any white in the mixture.
7. Pour half the mixture into each tin and then put in the oven for about 30 minutes.  Do not open the oven before 20 minutes have past.
8. Once baked. remove and let stand in the tins for a couple of minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

Strawberry Milkshake Buttercream:

• 30ml/1fl.oz full fat milk
• 40g/1.4oz Nesquik strawberry milkshake powder
• 375g/13.2oz icing sugar
• 130g/4.5oz butter
• Pink food colouring

1. Dissolve the milkshake powder in the milk.
2. Beat the butter in a bowl until it is creamy.
3. Sift in the icing sugar and beat into the butter until smooth.
4. Add the milkshake and food colouring and mix in until you get the desired colour and the buttercream is smooth.

White Chocolate Buttercream:

• 125g/4.5oz butter
• 250g/9oz icing sugar
• 200g/7oz white chocolate 
• 1 tsp vanilla extract 

1. Melt the chocolate in a glass bowl placed over a pan of simmering water.
2. Cream together the butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract until smooth and creamy.
3. Add the melted white chocolate and mix in until smooth.

Assembly:

• 2 vanilla cake layers
• Milkshake buttercream
• White chocolate buttercream
• 155g/5.5oz milk chocolate

1. Cut each cake layer in half so you have four layers.
2. Place the first layer, cut side up, on the serving plate.
3. Cover with 1/4 of the milkshake buttercream and then place the second layer, cut side down on top.
4. Cover this layer with another 1/4 of the buttercream and then place the third layer on top, cut side up.
5. Add another 1/4 of the buttercream to the top of this layer and place the final layer, cut side down, on top to cover.  Gently press down.
6. Apply a very thin layer of white chocolate icing over the whole of the cake (I use a butter knife), making sure to fill in any gaps.  This will be the crumb coat.
7. Now apply a thicker layer of the white chocolate buttercream over the crumb coat, making sure to cover the entire cake.  Smooth the buttercream down so it is nice and even.
8. Melt the milk chocolate in a heat proof bowl placed over a pan of simmering water without letting the bowl touch the water.
9. Pour the chocolate over the top of the cake, coaxing it towards the edges and over the sides.  Allow to set.
10. Place the remaining milkshake buttercream in a piping bag fitted with a large, closed star nozzle and pipe roses on top of the cake by making spirals that start in the centre and move outwards.
11. If you  have remaining white chocolate buttercream, you can also use that to add decoration too.  I used a large open star nozzle for mine.

Strawberry Milkshake Cupcakes

Once again I've gone about trying to find a good way to flavour my cupcakes with strawberry, since we don't seem to get strawberry extract over here in the UK.  This week's attempt was inspired by the hot-chocolate cupcakes I made a couple of weeks ago.  I was lying in bed, thinking about cake, when I suddenly thought I could get a similar effect adding milkshake powder in place of the drinking chocolate powder.  So that's how the idea was conceived.  I decided I also wanted to make a strawberry milkshake flavoured buttercream to go on top, rather than have whipped cream, because when I think of milkshakes they usually come topped with foam, not cream.  And what else comes with milkshakes?  Straws!  So I was determined to try and make edible straws too, just to complete the look.

I was considering making the cakes in dariole moulds, rather than in cupcake cases, since they have a more glass-like shape to them, which would look nice for the overall effect.  It would have taken me longer though, since I only have four moulds, and would have made them a bit unstable due to being top heavy.  Not that that would have been a problem, except they needed to make it to Dundee via a train so that didn't seem like a good idea in that case.  Next time I may make them in the darioles.

The cakes and buttercream were pretty simple.  I got worried briefly when doing the buttercream, because I didn't have as much icing sugar as I thought, and was worried I wouldn't have enough buttercream to decorate all 14 cakes.  But I managed it!  Just!  I literally had enough to ice them.  I couldn't have done any more.  So that was a relief.  It was the straws that gave me the most problems, since I wasn't sure how to go about them.  Ideally, I would have wanted them to be hollow, but I didn't have anything strong enough to do that with.  Really I need something like acetate.  I did try with foil but it didn't work.  So I resorted to filling plastic straws with chocolate instead.  This meant they wouldn't be hollow but solid straws was better than none at all.  Getting it to work took a bit of trial and error, especially when it came to getting them out of their cases, but I got there in the end and am overall quite pleased with the result.

The taste testers enjoyed them.  The fiance really liked them, putting them in the higher bracket of his ranking.  He described them as tasting "like the foam on top of a strawberry milkshake, only with more strawberry flavour and cake!" I personally think the buttercream is divine!  It has such a wonderful taste which reminds me of something strawberry flavoured I used to have as a kid.  I think it's strawberry Mini Milk ice lollies, but I'm not sure.  Possibly even strawberry ice cream.  Whatever it is, it is so yummy that I want to use it on other things.

Recipe - makes about 12

Cakes:

• 240ml/8.5fl.oz full fat milk
• 60g/2.1oz Nesquik strawberry milkshake powder
• 80g/3oz unsalted butter
• 280g/10oz caster sugar
• 240g/8.5oz plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 large eggs
• Pink food colouring

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/Gas Mark 5 and line a 12 hole muffin tray with muffin cases.
2. Put the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl and use an electric mixer to slowly whisk them together until you get something resembling fine breadcrumbs.  You can probably get this result with a spoon but it will take a long time.
3. Put the strawberry milkshake powder in a jug with the milk and mix in until dissolved, then add the eggs and beat together.
4. Add three quarters of the mixture to the dry ingredients and mix together until well incorporated and smooth.
5. Add the rest of the strawberry milk, as well as enough food colouring to produce a very pink mixture, beating until smooth.
6. Divide the mixture across the muffin cases, filling each about two thirds of the way up.  You may have excess mixture, so just put it into spare muffin cases and bake those too.
7. Bake for about 20-30 minutes, until the cakes are risen and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
8. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

Buttercream:

• 30ml/1fl.oz full fat milk
• 40g/1.4oz Nesquik strawberry milkshake powder
• 375g/13.2oz icing sugar
• 130g/4.5oz butter
• Pink food colouring

1. Dissolve the milkshake powder in the milk.
2. Beat the butter and icing sugar together in a bowl until they are smooth.
3. Add the milkshake and food colouring and mix in until you get the desired colour.
4. Fit a piping bag with a large, round tipped nozzle and prepare a small bowl of cold water.
5. Pipe 'bubbles' onto the top of the cake.  Do this by holding the nozzle perpendicular to the surface of the cake, squeeze out a small, round blob of buttercream and pull away.  You will get a point left over but don't worry.  Repeat until the whole cake is covered.  You can vary the size as you go.  When the cake is covered, dip your finger in the water and press the points on each blob down so you get a rounded finish.

Chocolate straws:

• 55g/1oz white chocolate
• 4-5 plastic drinking straws
• Bamboo skewer

1. Melt the white chocolate in a bowl placed over a pan of simmering water.
2. Cut each drinking straw into 3 or 4 pieces of equal length so you have enough for each of your cupcakes.
3. Fit a piping bag with a small, round tipped nozzle and fill with the melting chocolate.
4. Put the nozzle in one end of a straw piece and squeeze the bag, filling the straw with chocolate.  Be careful not to let any come out the other side.  Set on a plate and repeat with the rest.
5. Freeze the straws for about 1 hour so they set.
6. Remove from the freezer.
7. Take one of the straws and place the blunt end of the skewer against one of the entrances.  Run your fingers down the straw to loosen the chocolate a bit, and push up with the skewer.  The chocolate straw should come out the top of the straw.  Place it back on the plate.
8. Repeat with all the straws then put them into the fridge for about 10 minutes to firm up again.
9. Stick into the buttercream at a slight angle.