Neapolitan Cake

My sister and her boyfriend came round to visit in the weekend. I was really happy- I have been trying to get my sister sister to visit me for ages, but this was the first time I bullied convinced her to actually come.
It's a good thing too, that was really her last chance before I move out of my amazing flat at the end of the semester!

Since I was receiving guests I decided to bake... and my excitement must have been huge (but don't tell anyone, it's a secret hahaha) since I ended up basically baking three cakes, and stacking them.

Be warned, this is a very sweet, very unhealthy and very HUGE cake that we still somehow managed to eat completely in three days!
Honestly, the members of T.E.F.S.C.A. (that's what we call our flat... it stands for The Epic Flat of Supreme Classy Awesomeness hahaha) must all be gluttons!

Anyway, without further ado here are the recipes... I'll post them separately to make it easier, then combine them at the end... I hope this appropriate is easy to follow! 

Chocolate cake

Ingredients: 

-3 cups flour

-2 cups sugar

-6 tablespoons cocoa powder

-2 teaspoons baking soda

-1 teaspoon salt

-2 cups water

-3/4 cup vegetable oil

-2 tablespoons vinegar

-2 teaspoons vanilla essence

Frosting ingredients:

-1 cup sugar

-6 tablespoons corn starch

-4 tablespoons cocoa

-1/2 teaspoon salt

-1 cup water

-2 tablespoons oil

-1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Directions

1) Preheat oven to 180°C

2) Thoroughly mix dry ingredients together (flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt)

3) Mix in wet ingredients (water, oil, vinegar, vanilla) continue mixing until you obtain an even batter with no lumps. (Or as little as possible... mine had some lumps, LOL...)

4) Pour into cake pan and bake for approximately 40 mins (but this could differ for your oven, it only took 30 for mine so I'd recommend checking it at about 20...)

5) Mix together all the frosting ingredients

6) Wait until the cake cools, then put the frosting all over, just as you would if it was a standalone cake. You may need to cut the top of the cake to make it flat, however.

Vanilla cake
Ingredients
-2 cups flour
-3/4 cup sugar

-1/2 tsp salt

-1 tsp baking powder

-1/2 tsp baking soda

-1 cup water

-2 tbs margarine

-2 tbs canola oil

-1 tsp vanilla essence

-1tsp lemon juice

Frosting ingredients
-3 tbs margarine
-1 tsp vanilla essence
-1/2 cup icing sugar

Directions
1) Preheat oven to 350°C
2) Mix dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and baking powder
3) Stir in wet ingredients (water, margarine, oil, vanilla essence and lemon juice), and combine well with a large spoon.
4) Oil cake pan, and pour in batter. Bake for 20-25 mins.
5) Mix together frosting ingredients with a fork until fluffy.
6) Once the cake has cooled, ice as you would a normal cake. You may need to flatten the top.

Berry cake
This ended up being a raspberry cake instead of the normal strawberry... this was due to the fact that we happened to have raspberry raro in our cupboard, so I decided to use that instead of baking my usual berry cake, which is a lot healthier and made with actual berries. I'm sure I'll post a recipe for that at some point too... also, I discovered that quite a lot of the strawberry flavouring available in the supermarket contains milk! I can't imagine why. You find milk in the strangest of things in New Zealand, probably because the dairy industry is so huge here... well, anyway...

The recipe for this berry cake was actually identical to the vanilla cake recipe, except that I added two packets of raspberry flavoured raro (a cordial mix) to the dry ingredients. I also added a few drops of red food colouring both to the cake mixture and to the icing. Raspberry flavouring would also probably be a good addition to the icing, however I didn't have any on hand.

This is what the cake looked like on the inside... delicious. Oh and if you're wondering about the badly Photoshopped cat, that was my lazy way of hiding my sister's face (she's a real poser in real life, but I'm still not sure if she'd want her face circulated on the internet...) I can Photoshop quite well (if I do say so myself haha) usually, but since I should be doing other things and this is really not important I just decided on sticking a massive cat on her head haha...

It was nearly a pig, my sister is one...

To decorate the top I used some of the multitude of bananas we have at home at the moment (they go quickly though, we all love bananas... even my male flatmate who does not eat much fruit) and some vegan chocolate chips. Om nom. My sister kept picking them off the top, what a pest! =P

My cake turned out slightly wonky, but it tasted delicious so who cares... still if I ever make it again I'll try to even out both the cake itself and the way I apply icing!

Oh- and of course each of the individual layers make wonderful individual cakes, (especially the chocolate part, delicious... that's also why I made that layer slightly bigger than the rest...) 

Happy baking! :)

~Ingi