Lucas loves to bake.  He has a little playhouse in our garden which started life as his pretend treehouse and has now turned into his bakery.  Whenever we’re outdoors playing he disappears in there to “bake”.  Oh, what delights we’ve had!  He made me some gingerbread men the other day, but what he likes pretend baking most of all are cupcakes.  Perhaps because he loves eating cupcakes the most?

So yesterday, when he was clamouring to make a cake, I thought that he wanted to play in the garden.  But no, it turned out that he wanted to bake a cake for Daddy.  Daddy neeeeeeeds cake! To be fair, Daddy probably did need lots of cake after a survival stag weekend in Wales.  (I was very relieved that he survived the zombie apocalypse and the torrential rain.  But completely missed the earthquake.)

And what sort of cake did Daddy need? Chocolate cake, of course!  So, knowing that (a) this would be messy no matter what, and (b) that Lucas gets bored very quickly, I opted for a one-bowl Devil’s Food cake.

I’d love to say that Lucas is some sort of genius toddler who can weigh our his own ingredients and tidy up after himself, but alas… Mummy played commis chef for the morning.  Anyone else find that their toddlers are tyrants in the kitchen?

Mummy! You did that wrong!
No, mummy! Put it there!
Lucas can do it! *grabs sieve*

So, Lucas climbed up on a chair and whisked.  Then he whisked some more and said it was very hard, so we finished that together.  Then he grabbed the sieve and sieved in the dry mixture, stirring it through the sieve which, joyfully, is far less messy than shaking the sieve!   Plus, it makes a funny noise so that was fun.  And then he whisked again and said, “oh! Where did the chocolate come from?” and looked at me so suspiciously that I laughed and laughed.  And then he looked so offended… and I laughed some more.

I wish I had more pictures but between trying not to cover the kitchen in batter, making sure he didn’t fall off the chair—he decided to have a dance on the chair half-way through—and just plain having fun, I only got a couple.

Unsurprisingly, Lucas vanished when it was time to clean up.  He did do a very good job of licking the bowl and spatula clean, which is surely the best part of making a cake!

After lots of wrangling about what sort of filling Daddy’s cake should have, he settled on chocolate buttercream.  (First of all he said that Daddy couldn’t have chocolate, then he wanted to put a lion inside, and then he wanted buttercream.  “What flavour,” I asked.  Tomato.)

One Real Chocolate buttercream later, Lucas was back on his chair, armed with a spatula and lots of enthusiasm.

For Instant Enthusiasm: Just Add Chocolate.

All I did was dollop the buttercream on and let him do the spreading out.  So, it doesn’t quite reach the edges but you do get a lovely thick mass of it in the middle which is lush.  The pretty topping is all Lucas, too.  He wanted sweeties on Daddy’s cake and since that was a much better idea than tomatoes, I was quite happy to open up some of his Easter sweeties (shhh!) and let him go to town!

So, there you have it.  Lucas baked a cake!  (And Mummy cleaned the kitchen.)

Daddy was very pleased with his “I missed you / welcome home / Lucas wanted chocolate cake” cake, so in a fit of bad parenting, we ate big slices of it for lunch.  And then we ate some more for second breakfast today (it’s a Hobbit thing), and there’s still plenty for afternoon tea, too!

One-bowl Devil’s Food Cake

• 250g caster sugar
• 250ml buttermilk (I just poured a 284ml carton in and didn’t bother scraping down the sides)
• 160ml (2/3 cup) sunflower oil
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 225g plain flour
• 50g cocoa powder
• 1 1/4 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 teaspoon fine salt

Preheat oven to 180C (fan 160C). Grease and line two 8″ sandwich tins.

Put sugar, buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla extract into a large bowl.  Whisk together.  Mix dry ingredients together and sieve into the wet mixture.  Whisk together to form a chocolate batter. (”It magic, mummy!”)

Divide between the tins; bake for 25 minutes or until tops are springy acocktail stick inserted into the middle of each cake comes out clean and dry.

Cool in tins on wire rack for 10 minutes, then turn out, remove base & paper and allow to cool completely before filling/decorating.

Real Chocolate Buttercream

• 175g dark chocolate (min 70% cocoa solids)
• 250g unsalted butter, softened
• 275g icing sugar, sifted
• 1T vanilla extract

(I scaled this down to use 100g unsalted butter since we were loading the top of the cake with sweeties.)

Chop chocolate into evenly sized chunks. Melt in the microwave, stirring after every 15 seconds or so, until melted.  Set aside to cool slightly.

In stand mixer, beat the butter until it is fluffy and a bit paler than when you started.  Add the icing sugar and beat together slowly.  (If your icing sugar seems to be flying out of the bowl and all over the kitchen, even though your mixer is on low, put a clean tea towel over the mixer to save on clean-up.)  When incorporated, scrape down sides, add vanilla, beat again, then scrape in all the lovely chocolate that you melted.  Beat this in, scrape down sides, and give it one last beat.  (I like to add a hefty pinch of sea salt when I make this buttercream for purely adult consumption.)