Polka Dot Cake

We have had another Birthday in our household!

My youngest turned seven yesterday.

Gosh time goes by so quickly......

Thanks to Pinterest I found a polka dot cake

The original recipe is here

I didn't follow all the instructions ..... for many reasons

first one was because I was running out of time and had to use the ingredients in my cupboard - the other was the recipe was written for US baking not Australian....

I had no idea what pudding mix was??

or flour baking spray etc

I think a trip out to Costco before baking would have helped me!!

Anyway my first attempt went ok,

could have been better but Ms 7 was happy enough. 

The cake pop balls took four attempts, I was ready to give up. 

The batter had to be very thick and the pan needed to be sprayed and flour coated for the cakes to come out of the pan - I made the presumption that it was a non stick pan and I could get away with just using baking spray.... and it stuck like no tomorrow.

MUST USE BAKING SPRAY & FLOUR

so after my fourth attempt I had some colourful cake pop cake balls  

My second mistake was making butter cakes as the main cake, I thought I needed a moist dense cake - I was worried about the polka dots drying out.

It did work BUT as a double layered cake it was too much cake - a lighter fluffy cake would have been better.

I iced the cake with a simple butter cream icing - I used four times the quantity in the recipe to cover the whole cake and the middle.

To keep it simple I used chocolate freckles to decorate the outside.

Not the best picture in the world, this is from my Instagram feed - as you can see the polka dots worked.... but more Polka Dots would have been good. 

I thought I packed them in pretty tight in the cake tin, I had around 15 polka dots in each layer. I think I was being a little too careful and should have crammed in a few more. 

So Voila - Ms 7's birthday cake 

I'd love to know if you have any tips or tricks? 

Xx Siobhan