Floral Teapot Cake - Tanya Bakes Chocolate Cake Recipe

Being British, I love a good cup of tea and so does my Grandmother, so when her 79th Birthday was approaching I decided that there was nothing better to make her than a teapot cake. Actually, when I brought it round to her [you can imagine the car journey holding the cake] she thought it was a real tea pot... whether she was wearing her glasses at the time I'm not sure! 

I recently bought 'Tanya Bakes' by the lovely Tanya Burr and it currently is my baking holy grail, every single recipe I have made from it has been wonderful - so thank you Tan for this beauty of a baking book. You can find it on amazon here. 
The recipe is actually her chocolate loaf cake but I made more of the mixture to fill my hemisphere moulds which I actually discovered are reduced in HobbyCraft if any of you want to pick up a bargain - link. 

On to the recipe:
Ingredients to fill 2x 6 inch hemisphere moulds - 
Chocolate Cake:
375g soften butter
150g white chocolate
150g milk chocolate
150g caramel filled chocolate [or any you may have]
300g caster sugar
6 eggs 
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
225g self raising flour
90g cocoa powder

Vanilla Buttercream: 
500g icing sugar
200g butter [soften]
3tsp milk
2tsp vanilla extract

Decoration:
Purple fondant 500g
White fondant [100g] with blue and red colouring for flowers
Edible glue

1. Preheat oven to 180C, 350F, Gas Mark 4 and line tins with baking paper and butter
2. Chop all of the chocolate into small chunks
3. In a large bowl cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy 
4. Add the eggs and fold in the baking powder, flour and cocoa until you have a smooth batter [electric mixed is preferable unless you've skipped arm day at the gym] 
5. Mix in all of the chocolate chunks
6. Pour evenly into both of the tins
7. Bake for 40 - 50 mins [if using a hemisphere mould the cake will need to be in for around 1hr 10 mins] but keep checking incase baked earlier.
8. Allow to cool on a wire rack and start to make the buttercream. 
9. Cream the butter until smooth, add the icing sugar and vanilla and beat until a smooth, light paste forms, add the milk to loosen the icing. 
10. To learn how to level, ice, crumb coat and cover this gorgeous cake with fondant visit Yolanda Gampp's Youtube Channel How To Cake It where she will give you ever tip you will need to know regarding this cake, and she's hilarious - link here. 

There you have it, a beautiful and delicious teapot cake, I hope you're all loving the weather here in the UK, Enjoy Xx