What's a chocoholic's dream come true? A four-tiered, statuesque, Amazonian, cake extravaganza with layers upon layers of Belgian chocolate sponge cake...decorated with lashings upon lashings of Swiss meringue buttercream. Oh, and studded with the whole tuck shop's choc stash of Maltesers, Rolos, KitKats and Chocolate Fingers.

This four-tiered chocolate birthday cake was for Keith who was celebrating his 40th birthday at Whatley Manor in the Cotswolds. We delivered it all the way from London. The sponges were variations of chocolate - Belgian cocoa, Vanilla-Chocolate-Chip...and my personal favourite, Chocolate Orange.

I wanted to give it a modern lift but keep some retro vibes. That sounds oxymoronic (Modern-Retro what?!) but hear me out. Modern, through stripes and fault lines, and retro with classic chain-piping decor. Do you see it? Yes? Oh yay. No? Okay then, moving on.

We have 4", 6", 8" and 10" tiers stacked and dowelled for support. The top tier has our glossy pure-butter Belgian ganache chocolate drip. The middle tiers have a chocolate and vanilla buttercream striped finish with a fault line look, and swirls of piped buttercream on each tier level, with some trickling down gradually into a fully piped bottom tier.

Whilst tiered-cakes are more often thought of in line with weddings, be it 40th or 50th we do them for big milestone birthdays. And why not?!

Lots of love,

Reshmi xoxo