Two years ago, after I graduated high school and picked up baking, I’ve been baking each of my family members their birthday cakes. Each birthday allows me to experiment with different kinds of cakes, textures and layers. But whenever my grandma’s birthday comes along, I always bake her favorite kind of cake, a yellow butter cake. but this year when I asked her what she wanted, her first answer was, to my surprise, chocolate!

Normally, I’d jump at any opportunity to bake anything chocolate [who doesn’t? ;)] but since my family is very conscious with sweets and do try to lay off them, I’ve decided to combine both butter and chocolate cakes. I know it sounds weird but I decided to have 2 layers of butter cake and a layer of chocolate in between them and frost with something light.

The cake turned out to be pretttttty good (I’m still eating it and it’s already midnight!)! Although, I would use another recipe for the chocolate layer instead of adding cocoa powder using the same yellow cake recipe. But the yellow cake was great! The frosting however, wouldn’t hold up as I would’ve liked maybe because it’s pretty hot in this part of the world but it was still quite okay.

Now I gotta admit two years on and I’m still a noob an amateur when it comes to cake decorating, being not exactly the most creative person on Earth which is ironic since I’d really like to open my own patisserie/cafe business in the future but hey, I like to think that my perseverance will pay off in the long run. ;)

Do you like the basket weave pattern? :3 I’m very happy even though it’s not perfect because this is my first try doing the pattern! The frosting started to melt towards the end though, but I’m still happy! Excuse the giddy person.

Buuuuut enough about me.

I’d like to dedicate this post to my Grandmother; a beautiful, caring, hardworking, loving and smart woman who’s achieved a lot and worked hard for her family. I hope you liked your cake this year or at least pretend to! Haha! Love you Ama*!

As for the recipes, I used Deb’s (of Smitten Kitchen) recipe for the yellow cake and for the frosting, I found this recipe for a Cream Cheese Whipped Cream Frosting from allrecipes.com, which is really light. You can find the recipe for the chocolate whipped cream filling here, wherein I used just half a teaspoon of the espresso powder and used melted chocolate instead of cocoa powder.

*Ama means grandmother in Hokkien, a Chinese dialect. :)