Have you made an impressive but easy cake?

[FizzyPink]

Looking for inspiration for something easy but impressive looking to make for DPs Birthday.

I’ve made a couple of sponges recently but they haven’t been brilliant which I think might be partly due to the fact our oven is old and gas and unless you put things on the top shelf they just don’t cook.

I’m imagining something like the photo attached but this may be slightly outside my skill set!

Any ideas?

If you like bananas, this is easy and very tasty www.annabel-langbein.com/recipes/bestever-banana-cake/3486/

Oohh he loves banana bread and that looks great! Thank you!

Nigella’s chocolate orange cake. It’s absolutely gorgeous and looks very impressive (all dark and shiny but really moist and utterly delicious). It’s a piece of piss to make as the recipe is foolproof (and when it comes to baking, I am definitely a weapons grade fool). It’s in the Feast book, but unfortunately not on her website.

Something like this:
www.recipesavants.com/Recipe/1-cce425/Moist-&-Fluffy-Devils-Food-Cake
The coffee (basically an espresso) makes such a difference. I have also made it dialling down the cocoa, but not getting rid of it completely, and adding cinnamon, which makes it much less like a chocolate cake but very interesting, especially if you have malteasers as part of the topping.
I made my original into a hedgehog shape some time ago, iced it with a bog standard icing and used half choc buttons for spines and a strawberry for a nose as a hedgehog cake was requested!

Ordinary Victoria sponge cakes filled and covered with bought, ready made buttercream or frosting then edged with bought chocolate curls or Cadbury finger biscuits and topped with chocolate sprinkles, etc are easy and people are impressed by then. You can vary things by putting lemon zest in the sponge mix and using lemon curd to sandwich the cake with, vanilla or cream cheese frosting/buttercream, use the white chocolate finger biscuits to edge then swirl some lemon curd into the buttercream in the top. Not cheap, but not much work.

Watching with interest as it's my DD1's 30th in a week or so and I've promised to make her a chocolate cake! I made one for her partner a few weeks' ago, but had to make that one in a hurry and it wasn't my best. So am on the lookout for a knockout chocolate cake recipe!