Day 1 - A Chocolate Cake With A Twist...

Well, what a fun way to start the advent calendar off! A Dalek Christmas Chocolate Cake, which you can make! Here's all the instructions and a list of supplies that you will need for your different Christmas pudding! Below you can see the finished product i.e. what your should look like.

What You Will Need

• Two 8 inch chocolate sandwich cakes (recipe here)
  
• Two Chocolate swiss rolls
  
• McVitie’s Jaffa Cakes
  
• At least 400g of milk chocolate. (buy more, you can never have too much chocolate)
  
• 100g bar of plain chocolate
  
• 100g bar of white chocolate (you won’t need the full 100g, but hey..)
  
• Cadbury Flake*
  
• Cadbury Chocolate Fingers*
  
• Cadbury chocolate buttons*
  
• Smarties*
  
• Large box Maltesers
  

* You will require only a few of each of the above.

Method

• Melt the chocolate in a dish over a pan of simmering water (take care kids!)
  
• Cut about 1inch from around one of the chocolate cakes. Try to hold the knife at an angle so that the cake tapers, getting thinner toward the top
  
• Now, stick the smaller cake on to the top of the uncut one. Anticipating a large and heavy cake you can err on the side of caution and used a large dollop of the melted chocolate to sandwich these together.
  
• Cut one of the chocolate swiss rolls in half. Do the same with second swiss roll, and using just one of the halves, cut it in half length ways. Stick these four pieces together using melted chocolate.
  
• Place the swiss rolls on top of the cake using, yes you’ve guessed it, melted chocolate, place a single piece of swiss roll on top of this and then start to cover the entire cake in melted chocolate. If you have the time, do this in layers, allowing one layer of melted chocolate to set before adding the next, and the next… if you don't have the time, pour the entire ½ thick chocolate on in one go. This proves rather frustrating as it continually gloops to the base.
  
• Before the chocolate sets completely (I was slightly insane by this point) start decorating the cake to give it it’s Dalek features.
  
• Place Maltesers in columns on the bottom half of the cake to form the skirt. Do Daleks wear skirts?
  
• Use half a Cadbury Flake and chocolate fingers to make the sticky-out-bits, and put a chocolate button on the ends (using the good ol’ tried ‘n’ tested melted chocolate method)
  
• Stack three Jaffa Cakes on top of the cake, followed by two stacks of three chocolate buttons. Add a Smartie to the top of the buttons.
  
• Place a band of white chocolate squares around the neck. You could of course pipe some melted white chocolate to create a similar effect.
  
• Using melted plain chocolate, pipe details around the Dalek; stripes down the Jaffa cakes, and lines between the Malteser columns etc.
  
• Leave to set in a cool place, then…
  
• Exterminate!… exterminate!…
  

Christmas Touch

To make the cake just that bit more Christmassy, why not sprinkle some fine sugar on the top of it, to make it look as if there is snow on the Dalek. There are many other things you can do besides this, though.