My double chocolate Harvest Festival cake was inspired by Fiona Cairn’s Vegetable Plot cake in her Birthday Cake Book. She uses a spiced apple cake in her book and decorates the top to look like an allotment. My cake was for a chocolate lover’s birthday so I used a lovely double chocolate cake recipe adapted from several recipes I have used in the past. I then used chocolate buttercream, chocolate sugar-paste and chocolate matchmakers to decorate this cake making it a chocolate lover’s delight!

Fiona’s Vegetable Plot cake was also demonstrated on her TV series ‘Home of Fabulous Cakes’ – details of which you can find on her website:- http://www.fionacairns.com/news_new-tv-series-announcement-9

You can also find out more about the series and Fiona Cairn’s cakesand recipes on her Facebook page:- http://www.facebook.com/fionacairnscakes

This is how I made the double chocolate cake:-

Ingredients

225g softened butter

400g caster sugar

4 eggs, beaten

100g self raising flour

275g plain flour

75g cocoa powder

1 1/12 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

350ml milk

100g chocolate chips

Method

Prepare an 8” square cake tin and heat the oven to 180c.

Beat the butter and sugar together until soft. Sift the dry ingredients and stir together. Add the beaten eggs to the butter and sugar mixture very slowly. Fold in the dry ingredients. Pour the cake into the prepared cake tin and bake for approximately 1 hour 20 minutes.

To decorate:-

I cut a template the same size as the cake tin out of greaseproof paper. I folded this in quarters diagonally. I then rolled out and cut 4 pieces (triangles to fit inside each of my quarters) of chocolate roll-out fondant icing. I then decorated each of these 4 triangles with various vegetables made from sugar-paste.  (Fiona Cairns gives instructions on how to do this in her book.) I also made some sugar paste leaves, using cutters, to decorate the bottom of the cake.