As promised last week, here is the recipe for icing that chocolate cake.

Icing Ingredients

• 50g butter / marge
• 1 tsp coffee
• 40 mL cocoa
• 1 tbs vanilla essence
• boiling water (to half a cup of liquid)
• roughly 325g icing sugar

Method

Combine the cocoa, coffee and hot water in a small jug or class, then add the vanilla to the mixture.

Loosen the cake with a pallette knife (around the sides and at the bottom).	Put the butter in the pot and melt it.	Don’t let it go brown.
Add the cocoa, coffee, vanilla and water mixture to the melted butter.	Add the icing sugar.	Stir the contents of the pot until …
There are no more lumps.	The icing should be thick enough to spread. If it is too thick,it won’t stick on the cake. If it is too thin, then it may end up running down the sides.	Spread the icing on the side of the cake. Do this over the pot so that any drips get recycled.
Place a plate over the centre of the cake, put your hand on top of the plate.	Now turn the cake “upsidedown” so that the cake is on the plate.	Your cake should look like this.
Mark the sides of the cake (be gentle), this helps the icing stick on the cake and is also a handy guide for cutting even slices.	Thin the remaining icing a little with some hot water (a tiny bit goes a long way), then pour the slightly thinner icing onto the top of the cake.	Spread the icing evenly on the top of the cake.
Mark the top of the cake.	It should look like this. You could stop here but if you have leftover icing, there is lovely finishing touch.	Add about one teaspoon of water to the remaing icing to make it nice and thin.
It should look like this.	Drizzle the icing over the top of the cake.	Your finished cake should look wonderful.

I have a confession. The above photos show my mom icing the cakes that I baked. My dad wanted to take a cake with him to the office and I needed one for a gift so I made up a double recipe of batter and then my mom volunteered to do the icing. The icing above can be a bit tricky, so if it does not work first time, don’t be upset. I can guarantee that even if it does not look totally professional, it will taste really good. Obviously we doubled up the recipe for the icing as well but all the numbers above are to ice one cake only.