This was my Father’s surprise 60th birthday cake. One of his favourite things to do is zoom along the beaches on his quad bike, with Gordy the dog in the bike basket. We’re lucky here in New Zealand, it’s a long skinny country, lots of beaches which are often pretty much deserted.

It’s a caramel mud cake, filled with caramel between the layers, covered in milk chocolate ganache, and white chocolate icing.

I originally baked enough cakes for it to be a two tiered mad hatter, but for a variety of reasons I decided to stick to one. Good thing too, it was pretty big and the next day I was wrapping up huge chunks and making anyone who visited take a piece home! I still carved the bottom into the mad-hatter shape though. The top tier got eaten by work colleagues, so it all worked out OK.