White Chocolate Frosted Chocolate Chiffon Cake {for Hubby’s Birthday}

By Tasneem Rajkotwala @tasu0704

There is no celebration without a cake. And there is a cake for every celebration!

I should have written this post in July after posting teasers of my husband's birthday cake on Instagram here and here; now 10 weeks later while I think of another upcoming celebration, this post finally sees a light of the day. Allow me to get a bit cheeky, but I promise I'll keep this post as short as possible.

Are any of you big on celebrating birthdays? We usually keep it a low-key affair hanging out with friends and family. Now that we don't have many relatives here in Dubai and just a few scattered in the city we usually end our birthday with a quiet dinner with family unless if it is a birthday of our little precious one. And sometimes we have friends coming in to make us feel extra special! I am bad at keeping secrets. I am a woman after all! But really when a few of them told me to stay muted until they arrive at our doorstep, I promise I tried my complete best to hide the excitement. And just few minutes before it could all end, a stupid blush on my cheeks revealed it all.

My husband is a wonderful responsible man - with this I mean I don't have to worry about his towels lying around as is the perception of a man, laundry, grocery shopping on days I don't feel like stepping into a market, cleaning the cupboards and puts great effort in making me feel on top of the world apart from being an ideal human that he is. No that's not an exaggeration. He is also a great father to Little A. He doesn't always show it but I know he equally have a restless night when Little A isn't well. Or just as emotionally overwhelmed while watching our son perform on the stage every time. He is only gone for a couple days for an official trip to the capital, and I miss sorely being irked every moment after he is back home. Did I also tell you he does fantastic barbecues (with shopping to digging into a marinade all by himself) and known as a BBQ king in our circle? All this doesn't mean we don't have our share of arguments - our choices are completely different, if one thinks right the other thinks left. While he is on the homey side, I need adventure in everything I do which also lead my decisions to be unpredictable. We fight for tiniest things like the color of our curtains and furniture. Whether we should be dining at a certain place or not. And more often than not, he is a sweet chap to apologize for a mistake he never committed.To celebrate an excellent company in my life, I only just had to do little. Bake a chiffon cake that he loves from the same recipe as I did on this blog's first birthday. Now this is a very straightforward cake with no-frills, so this time around I played with icing and decoration a little bit. I love unpolished cakes that have cozy feeling to it as compared to the perfectly done store-bought cakes. They have such an homey feeling to it - like they are made with pure love. When the cake started to look very plain after it was frosted in white chocolate buttercream icing, a box of cherries and strawberries served their right purpose, mingling with green pistachios on the other half-side of the cake.

Nothing ever beats a cake warming up in the oven. And spreading its love.

Follow the chocolate chiffon cake recipe here.

White Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients :

  • White chocolate - 1 cup, broken into small pieces
  • Unsalted butter - 1 cup, at room temperature
  • Icing sugar - 1 cup
  • Heavy cream - 1/3 cup
  • Vanilla - 1 tsp
  • Salt - 1/4 tsp
  • Milk - 2 tbsp, as required

Method : On a medium heat, warm the heavy cream until it starts to bubble from the sides. Pour over the white chocolate and stir. Let it rest for a while till the chocolate is melted and forms into a ganache. Beat butter with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add icing sugar and keep beating at low speed until all incorporated. Add in white chocolate ganache and vanilla and whisk again until light and fluffy. Add milk in proportions only if the frosting is too thick.

Smear the frosting between two chocolate chiffon cakes and cover with white chocolate butter cream frosting. Decorate as you please. I used strawberries, cherries and pistachios for this cake.