How to bake a birthday cake for someone special
It made me
feel accomplished 
"baking is such a fun thing to do, i recommend starting with cupcakes."
How I did it: I started off making baby cakes and decided it would be fun to attempt a mudcake. I had never tried making a mudcake, i'm more a sponge, soft and fluffy type of baker so this was fun to attempt. So it was my niece's birthday and i volunteered my skills for the day :)
Lessons & tips:
I found a recipe online which look a tad too much for me so i halved the quantity and made my own tweaks ...
Chocolate Mud Cake
Ingredients
150 grams of milk chocolate (half a block)
2 tablespoons cooking cocoa (optional, it does make the liquid mixture a bit lumpy so it may need to be sieved)
100 grams of butter
300 ml water
1 egg
3/4 castor sugar
1 cup self raising flour
Method
1. Preheat over to 180C. Grease and line a 20cm round cake tin with baking paper.
2. In a saucepan, over low heat, heat chocolate, cocoa, butter and water. Stir frequently until melted and smooth. Remove from the heat and cool slightly.
3. In a large bowl, lightly beat eggs. Gradually beat cooled chocolate mixture into eggs.
4. Whisk sugar and flour into chocolate mixture, continue beating until smooth and well blended.
5. Pour mixture into cake tin. Bake for 45 minutes or until skewer inserted into center comes out clean.
6. Turn cake onto wire rack to cool.
NOTE: mixture is meant to be very runny.
Ganache --> topping
150 grams of milk chocolate (rest of the block)
3/4 cup of cream
50 grams of butter
1. Chop up chocolate
2. Melt cream and butter in a saucepan. Bring to the boil.
3. Pour cream and butter mixture over chopped up chocolates in a bowl.
4. Stir the mixture until the mixture is smooth.
5. Allow the ganache to cool (room temperature) before spreading over cake.
Resources: baking websites
