An 18th birthday

Our gorgeous Sarah turned 18 yesterday - we had big plans, a scrummy dinner consisting of chicken pie and potatoe bake and an awesome cake, BUT the birthday girl fell sick like a ton of bricks, taking her littlest sister with her, so neither of them ate. Thankfully the birthday party for friends isn't for a couple of weeks, so hopefully they'll be recovered by then and I can post photos of her, she wouldn't let me take piccies yesterday.

But here is the cake as I know you want to see!!!

Recipe from one of my favourite magazines - BBC Good Food - Chocolate and Caramel Layer Cake.

I made a few substitutions as always.

The cakes went together easily, though they aren't what I would call a sponge, they rose nicely but then flattened, which makes them easy to stack, I found I needed to add a wee bit more liquid to the vanilla/chocolate ones, so I just used milk. I used Black Swan Vanilla Bean natural yoghurt.

I did pike and buy *shock horror* Nestle caramel top and fill, I've just been too busy to make it from scratch.

And the icing I did differently as well - I used a block of Cadbury Dairy Milk, broken into pieces, then I poured over 1 cup of thickened cream which had been boiled. Then mixed them together and popped them in the fridge to cool down and then whipped it up until fluffy and holding it's shape.

It's sprinkled with sugar pearls and it looked fab and tasted delicious - I bet it will taste even better today - be warned it's a big cake, and you'll need somewhere to put it since it has cream on it, but it's not overly rich.

Shane took the photos, and you can see he's not a food stylist lol!!