For Olivia’s Fourth Birthday, we decided to make a chocolate cake. She wanted a Frozen-themed birthday party, but with some blue-tinted icing, and store-bought snowflake decoration that was easily done!

Ingredients (cake):

500g cake wheat flour

110g high quality cocoa powder

2 tsp PnP baking powder

2 tsp baking soda

620g castor sugar

1 tsp salt

4 PnP large eggs

1 cup PnP sunflower oil

1.5 cup Pick n Pay full cream smooth yoghurt 

2 tsp PnP vanilla flavour essence

2  cup hot espresso

Ingredients (icing):

250 g Pick n Pay Salted Butter (room temperature)

450 g Pick n Pay icing sugar

a splash of Pick n Pay white spirited vinegar

a drop of Pick n Pay blue food colouring

Method:

Preheat oven to 175 °C. Use Cook ‘n Bake cooking spray to grease three round cake pans (20 cm diameter).

Mix the eggs, add oil, yoghurt and vanilla in a mixer.

Sift flour, cocoa, baking powder and baking soda on top and blend well. Next, add sugar and salt and whisk on medium-low, until no lumps are showing and the mixture is blended well. Be careful not to mix for too long. The mixture will be thick and somewhat dry. Add the hot coffee gradually in two stages and beat until evenly combined and the batter is smooth.

Divide batter evenly between the prepared pans and bake for 30-35 minutes. Cakes are ready when a cake fork inserted in the centre comes out dry and clean, and the cakes spring back when pressed gently and a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.

Transfer pans to a wire rack and let cool for 15 minutes before inverting onto the rack to cool completely.

Once cakes are cooled, cover them with butter cream icing. For Olivia’s birthday cake, I mixed some butter (on room temperature) with icing sugar and added a splash of vinegar and one drop of blue food colouring.

About Shawn Godfrey

Shawn Godfrey is an entrepreneur based in Cape Town, South Africa. After the Covid-19 lockdown saw his business in financial distress, cooking was the creative outlet that helped to keep him sane. To keep track of his recipes, and encourage friends and families to join him, he starts his instagram account The Roasted Dad.

Fast-forward to late 2021 - on a whim Shawn (encouraged by his wife Lianne) enters MasterChef South Africa. It is a crazy time of life: running a 200 people business and struggling to keep it profitable, two small children with a third on the way, and about to move into a new house. But when Shawn gets selected to be one of the 20 contestants participating in the fourth season of MasterChef South Africa, he decides to go all in. Leaving his 7-month-pregnant wife to look after their then three and one-year-old children, he battles it out and comes back home five weeks later with the trophy and a million rand prize money in his pocket.

It all started with an Instagram account, but The Roasted Dad is so much more now. Shawn has stayed his entrepreneurial self and whilst he hosts Private Dinner Parties and Cook-with-Me Demos, does Restaurant Take-Overs, he still runs the lighting company and several other businesses.

On his blog, Shawn shares Restaurant Reviews and Accommodation Reviews, and gives an insight into the wild and wonderful life he leads together with his wife Lianne, and their three children Aiden (6), Olivia (4) and Harvey (2).

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