This was a very quick bake, using just stuff I had sitting around in the house, mainly so we had something to nibble on during the New Years Day episode of Sherlock!The recipe is from Mary Berry's "Simple Cakes" book, which I got as a Christmas present. it's a simple 3-egg pound cake mixture, with half having cocoa powder added, then it's spooned into a lined 2lb loaf tin, and baked at 170'C for 45-50 minutes. The recipe had a couple of minor variations...the fat content was slightly lower than normal (175g of butter, with 225g of flour and sugar), and there was an extra 1tsp of baking powder added. The end result is a slightly lighter, drier cake than normal.
The icing was simply 25g of butter, melted in a saucepan, and then 15g of cocoa powder and 100g of ciing sugar is mixed in, before a splash of milk to get a good spreading consistency. It's got a nice ganache-ey consistency, without the hassle of melting chocolate and blending with cream. The white chocolcate stars were just sprinked on at the end to give a bit of contrast.
I was in a hurry making it, so didn't let the cake cool fully before spreading the icing...the end result was that it dripped a bit too much down the side.