Method

Preheat the oven to 150 °C and lightly grease a 20 cm cake tin.

Place the milk, sugar, butter and chocolate in a pot. Heat until melted (do not boil). Whisk continuously to stop it catching. Remove from the heat and set aside until slightly cooled, then add the eggs and whisk to combine.

Sift the cocoa powder, the Sasko Self-Raising Flour and the Sasko Cake Flour together. Add the dry ingredients to the milk mixture and whisk until combined.

Pour the cake batter into the prepared tin and bake for 1½–2 hours. Remove from the oven and leave in the tin until cooled before turning out.

Tips:

This cake can be frozen. Cover well in plastic wrap and place in the freezer for up to 3 months, if you can resist it for that long. Leave out to thaw and serve.

I have baked this cake in different ovens and had these time discrepancies. Also flour does not always have the exact same moisture content and x-large eggs are not always an exact science. The cake is ready when it starts to shrink from the sides of the tin, bounces back when lightly pressed and a skewer comes out clean.

For the Ruffles:

Make 400 g of fondant icing and divide the icing into equal quarters. Leave the first quarter white. Add one tiny drop of colour to the second quarter to make the palest pink, add 2 tiny drops of colour to the second quarter for a slightly stronger pink and finally add 3 tiny drops to the third quarter to make the deepest pink.

Once all of the colour has been added all of the fondant must be treated with a product called CMC (available at baking shops). This will help the ruffles to maintain their shape and the cake CANNOT be done without CMC.

Starting with the white icing, roll it out until it is very thin – you can use a machine for making pasta. Cut into strips 15 cm x 2.5 cm. Using a tapered tool such as a small handle of a paintbrush, press and roll along the length of the strip at regular intervals to make a ruffled edge.

Brush the lower edge of each strip with water using a small paintbrush. Attach the ruffles to the cake starting at the top, pressing the bottom third of each ruffle gently but firmly to attach it to the cake. Attach the next ruffle about 0.5 cm below the first one. Attach two strips of the white before repeating with the next slightly darker pink ruffles.

Repeat until you have used up all the strips. You can finish off the bottom of the cake with a ribbon or fold the last ruffle over to neaten the bottom of the cake.