Dinosaur rock chocolate cake

For Ash's birthday, I decided to make Dinosaur Rock Chocolate Cake from p27 of the Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook. The Crabapple Cupcake Bakery has a gorgeous little cupcake shop at Prahran Market in Melbourne. My favourite cupcakes from there to date are the coconut marshmallow cloud cupcakes, with fluffy marshmallow frosting, and the Alice in Wonderland cupcakes, topped with coconut ice and a glace cherry!

I know that Ash likes chocolate, but I didn't want to repeat the pure chocolate indulgence of Friday too soon (you gotta keep people guessing). The Dinosaur Rock Chocolate Cake uses cocoa instead of chocolate for its flavour, and boy, is there a lot of it - one whole cup! The recipe is meant to make 24 cupcakes, and if I had been paying attention, I would have halved it to make the cake - but by the time I realised what a large quantity of batter the recipe made, it was too late. This was one mother of a cake! The batter filled the bowl of my electric mixer almost to the top, which has never happened before. It must also have put too great a strain on the mixer's motor/heart, because after 12 years of faithful service, the motor blew up while I was trying to make the marshmallow frosting on p150 of the Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook to imitate Ash's girlfriend's marshmallow cupcakes. So unfortunately for Ash, I made plain old chocolate glace icing.

My trials were not over yet, because I made the white contrasting icing too thin to pipe properly, and my first effort at piping Ash's name on the cake ended up being an illegible blob. Blind panic set in as I scraped off the awful mess, pulled off the glace cherries decorating the top of the cake, and desperately tried to patch up the chocolate icing before giving the piping another go and reattaching the cherries. These misadventures explain the rather rugged look to the icing, and as you can see, the piping is still rather wobbly. Methinks some practice with whipped cream on a piece of greaseproof paper is urgently needed!

Ash did not come to work today, so this cake is as yet untested and is waiting patiently for his return in the fridge at work. I will update you on the verdict on this cake once it becomes available.

Postscript: Despite its dramatic beginnings, this cake was really good and went down a treat. Here is a quote kindly provided by Sam:

"It was a delicious cake with a rich, moist, chocolatey goodness about it.
It has quite a smooth texture and seemed to go down almost too well!!!
Can I get the recipe?"