birthday cake

so, I turned 25 this week. to celebrate we drove to berlin and had a great meal with my friend at fes turkish bbq and later in the week I headed to belgium for a short vacation before my new job starts. anyway, the family is coming tomorrow for a birthday brunch and mum and I spend the day preparing. I ate a delicious appel cake with speculatoos at this patisserie in brugge called patisserie academie which inspired me to use some lotus biscoff creme for my birthday cake too. so we ended up making a devil's food cake with speculators filling using a recipe by cafe fernando. we adapted the filling to

250g dark chocolate

180g lotus cream

200g "whipped" cream

instructions: 1) melt the chocolate in a water bath 2) take the chocolate off the heat 3) add lotus cream and mix thoroughly until lotus cream has melted 3) after it cooled down add cream and mix using an electric mixer. be careful not to overdo it.

if you need a recipe for the dough see this post or check Martha Stewart's website.

et voilà a chocolate birthday cake with speculators: