Today, 28th January 2017, is the first ever birthday and blogiversary of Sharkett Sisters!
83 posts, a move to London, and many, many cakes later and we have made it. We have loved every second of it! We really appreciate every single view and comment, even if this is the first post you're reading from us, so THANK YOU!
If you've read our blog before, you will know that not a single occasion goes by without a cake to celebrate. We love trying new things so this is a cake we have never made before. This is our Strawberry and White Chocolate cake! (Take a deep breath before this next sentence.) It is white chocolate sponge in shades of pink, filled with strawberry buttercream and strawberry pieces, covered with white chocolate buttercream and topped with white chocolate drizzled and hundreds and thousands sprinkled strawberries, and lots of pink or sprinkly sweets.
We love how it turned out, it's super pretty and tastes divine!
A fabulous way to celebrate one year of blogging!
Ingredients:
For the cake...
10oz butter
10oz caster sugar
5 eggs
180g white chocolate, melted
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp baking powder
10oz self-raising flour
For the strawberry buttercream...
4oz butter
5 strawberries, chopped small
16oz icing sugar
For the white chocolate buttercream...
5oz butter
60g white chocolate, melted
13oz icing sugar
For decoration...
fresh strawberries
white chocolate
party rings
pink sweets such as jelly beans, bon bons, jazzies, chocolate mice etc.
Preheat your oven to 200°C/180°C Fan/Gas mark 6 and line your round cake tins with greaseproof paper.
To make the sponge, beat together the butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the melted chocolate, eggs, vanilla and baking powder and combine. Then add the flour and combine to make a smooth batter. Divide the cake mixture into four bowls and add in your colours. We went for an ombre effect and so just added more colouring each time.
Pour the mixture into your lined cake tins, and pop these into your pre-heated oven and bake for 25 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.
To make the strawberry buttercream, start by chopping up around 5 strawberries into small pieces. Then beat together your butter and icing sugar, adding the icing sugar in gradually. Add in your strawberries and continue to beat. If your mixture is not thick enough at this point then just add in some more icing sugar until you are happy with the consistency.
Making the white chocolate is the exact same process as above, just swap in the white chocolate and take out the strawberries.
Now you can start putting the cake together!
Take your first layer of sponge and place onto a board or plate. Secure this by putting a small amount of buttercream onto the board under the cake. Then spread on a generous amount of strawberry buttercream and sprinkle with chopped strawberries. Continue until you have placed your final layer of sponge on top.
If you have any strawberry buttercream left at this point then you can use this to fill in the gaps around the edge. If not, you can use some of the white chocolate buttercream.
Cover the whole cake in a layer of white chocolate buttercream. You can either smooth it out using a palette knife or go for a more rough, artistic look. We decided to colour some of the leftover buttercream pink so we could have a watercolour look.
Decorate the top of your cake with strawberries, chocolates and sweets of your choice.
This cake tastes like an absolute dream! and looks pretty impressive too!
A beautiful way to celebrate our first year of blogging!
White chocolate buttercream is one of the best things we have ever done in our lives, it's too divine to even describe. It also works really well as a cake flavour and white chocolate sponge is definitely going to be a regular! And it goes perfectly with fresh strawberries so next time we probably wouldn't bother with the strawberry buttercream and would just use a whole load of chopped fresh strawberries between layers!
The pink ombré worked just as we wanted it too, and looks so so pretty!
A beautiful way to celebrate our first year of blogging!
White chocolate buttercream is one of the best things we have ever done in our lives, it's too divine to even describe. It also works really well as a cake flavour and white chocolate sponge is definitely going to be a regular! And it goes perfectly with fresh strawberries so next time we probably wouldn't bother with the strawberry buttercream and would just use a whole load of chopped fresh strawberries between layers!
The pink ombré worked just as we wanted it too, and looks so so pretty!
Thank you so much for reading this post!
We really hope you have enjoyed reading it and have enjoyed the first year of our blog as much as we have!
If there are any posts you would love to see from us this year, baking or otherwise, then please leave suggestions in a comment below, we would love to know.
Please follow us on Bloglovin', Instagram and like our Facebook page 'Sharkett Sisters', if you want to see more of us!
(All social media links are at the top of the page or in a box to the side!)
And please check out our Pinterest profile for lots of gorgeous ideas and maybe some sneak peeks of what we're planning!
See you soon,
Lots of love, Antonia and Imogen x
