My Happy Birthday

Growing up, I hardly ever celebrated my birthday. A January (summer school holidays) birthday meant one thing - no party. All my friends were likely away on vacation and before the invention of mobile phones and internet, I normally didn't see or talk to them until school started again.

Nowadays as a responsible adult, I see my birthday as an excuse to make cake and drink bubbly with a few close friends. Last year when I turned 30, I thoroughly enjoyed my white chocolate mudcake (you can see photos here) - so I decided to make it again! This time with all the bells and whistles!
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WHITE CHOCOLATE MUDCAKE

You will need:

- 200g chopped butter

- 250g chopped white chocolate (you can use melts/chips)

- 1 cup caster sugar

- 200ml boiling water from the kettle

- 2 eggs

- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

- 1 cup plain flour

- 1 cup self-raising flour

Sift the flours together into a large bowl and set aside.

In a double boiler, melt together the butter, chocolate, sugar and water.

Set aside for 15-20 minutes to cool.

Mix in the eggs, one at a time.

Add the wet mix to the flour and gently combine.

Bake at 150 C until a skewer comes out clean.

I divided the mix into 2 round tins and baking time was about 1 hour.

To decorate, I added a touch of pink food colouring to my buttercream recipe you can find here.

Omit the chocolate in the recipe - unless you want chocolate buttercream!

To make the white chocolate drip, I melted 100g chopped white chocolate with 40ml cream.

Simply zap in the microwave for 30 seconds at a time, stirring until it's done.