Three-tiered surprise on the inside chocolate cake

It is blogposts like this that demonstrate just what a rubbish blogger and baker I am. Because when I'm experimenting in the kitchen, I rarely keep track of exactly what I'm doing and so end up clueless about the exact quantities of the ingredients I've used. A big no-no when it comes to the 'science' that is baking.

Anyhow when I made this triple-layered cake that thankfully turned out well, I did want to keep a note of the bits I could remember as a learning point for next time.

First I made a basic vanilla cake batter using:
4 eggs
240g self-raising flour
200g caster sugar
240g stork

Once those ingredients were combined, I took 200g of the batter and added in a handful of freeze-dried strawberries. This batter was then poured into my little heart-shaped cake tin (greased and lined) and baked in the oven at 180C for just over 30 minutes.

Then I divided the remaining batter in two.

Into one half I added some random amount of cocoa powder. I could probably have added more as it didn't become too dark coloured. But I was wary of the mixture drying out too much. I added a small splash of milk to keep the consistency and stop it becoming too dry with the cocoa powder.

I greased and lined a circular cake tin and dolloped the vanilla batter and chocolate batter in. Using a lollipop stick I swirled the two around to make a marble effect.

This needed around 30 minutes in the oven at 180C.

For the bottom layer of cake, I mixed together:
180g sugar
100ml rapeseed oil
140g self-raising flour,
1 egg,
40g cocoa powder

vanilla
175 ml milk

This chocolatey batter was poured into a greased and lined square cake tin and popped into the oven at 190C for about 30 minutes.

When all three cakes had cooled, I could start decorating. Each cake got a crumb coat of whipped double cream first. 

I looked up a mirror glaze recipe which stated 175ml double cream, 70g sugar, 20g cocoa powder, 1 and a half leaves gelatin and 75ml water but when I made this up following the instructions it remained very 'watery' and was really running off the cake. 

So an extra leaf and a half of gelatin was added to it, followed by some melted dark chocolate. 

Once cool, this was thick enough that it seemed to work. Not quite as mega-shiny as some mirror-glazes but I was happy enough with it.

I used it for the bottom layer, adding a few chocolate curls around the base.

I also used it for the middle layer. White chocolate was then drizzled across the middle cake.

Finally for the top layer, I didn't even attempt a white chocolate mirror glaze so instead just made a white chocolate ganache with unknown quantities of double cream and white chocolate and poured it over. This was finished off with some freeze-dried strawberries sprinkled around the sides.

So each layer ended up looking different on the outside as well as being different on the inside. Together they had the wow factor as my kids were impressed with it.