My baby brother turned 18 this month. I still remember him like this:

(He will obviously thank me for this photo being on the internet)

Luckily I made him an awesome birthday cake so hopefully he’ll forgive me.

Anyone who follows me on Pinterest will have seen various versions of this cake before pinned to my CAKE. board.

The cake itself is a chocolate sponge made using Angela Nilson’s Ultimate Chocolate Cake recipe

I made the cake in a tall 8 inch cake tin and then cut it into three layers. The cake recipe includes a recipe for ganache that was more than enough for me to fill three layers of cake and cover the top and sides to attach the chocolate.

I used about 4 “Sharing” packs of Maltesers and 4 “Sharing” packs of crunchy M&Ms. The cake took 15 4 finger Kit Kats to cover the sides. You can buy multi packs of 4 finger Kit Kats. I think they come in packs of 8 so you’ll need at least two packs, I bought three to be on the safe side, never hurts to have some spare chocolate at the end!

Now for the magic…

To get your anti-gravity effect you could use a special metal anti-gravity cake kit like this one that Lakeland sells.

Orrrr you could use the big straws that you have left over from making a wedding cake…

Not the greatest quality photo since my brother’s birthday was a Wednesday night and I was trying to get the decorating part done between arriving home from work at 7 and going out for dinner at 7:30!

You can buy the straws in packs of 45 from Amazon here for a couple of quid. I only used 2 for this cake and around 15 for the wedding cake so I’ve still got loads left!

I basically shoved the straws into the cake at 45 degree angle and then coated the outside with ganache using a palette knife and attached the sweets. Note the maltesers are really flipping easy to attach since they’re so light. The M&Ms… not so much. I actually have a real dislike of M&Ms after trying to get them to stick to the straw for this cake 🙈 All it takes is a little bit of patience and time, neither of which I had in the 30 mins I had to complete this!

After we got back from dinner we did candles:

Yes that does read Happy Bday… life’s too short to try and find the missing alphabet candles at 10 pm!

Overall I’m happy with how this turned out given how little time I had to spend on it!

To make your own you will need:

Equipment:

20cm wide, 7.5.cm deep cake tin

Palette knife

Mixing bowls

Plate or cake board

Boba Straws

Ingredients:

For the cake:

• 200g good quality dark chocolate, about 60% cocoa solids
• 200g butter
• 1 tbsp instant coffee granules
• 85g self-raising flour
• 85g plain flour
• ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 200g light muscovado sugar
• 200g golden caster sugar
• 25g cocoa powder
• 3 medium egg
• 75ml buttermilk (5 tbsp)
• grated chocolate or curls, to decorate

For the ganache:

• 200g good quality dark chocolate, as above
• 284ml carton double cream (pouring type)
• 2 tbsp golden caster sugar

For the decorations:

4 packs of Maltesers (large sharing packs)

4 packs of M&Ms (large sharing packs) (I used the crunchy variety)

3 packs of 8 x 4 finger Kit Kats

Author: Siobhan Lear