Floating Anti-Gravity Mini Egg White Chocolate and Lemon Cake

I was really pleased with this Easter cake apart from one thing - I ran out of Mini Eggs!

I had this cake in mind for a long time after I got Lakeland's pouring cake kit for Christmas. I made a white chocolate and lemon cake, filled it with buttercream and lemon curd, and stuck Cadbury's white chocolate fingers around the outside. I used the Lakeland kit to make it look as if a packet of Cadbury Mini Eggs was pouring onto the cake, and I filled the top of the cake with buttercream and Mini Eggs - or tried to until I ran out, and added a few Cadbury's Oreo mini eggs to fill in some gaps.

It would have looked better with more Mini Eggs - I bought a couple of packets in the run-up to Easter and hid them in the garage (last year my boyfriend kept finding them in the larder and eating them!) but right before the Easter weekend wondered if I might actually need some more Mini Eggs. I ordered some from Tesco along with my online grocery delivery but they ran out, and when my dad went to buy a newspaper he had a look in the corner shop he had a look but they didn't have any either. So I had to make do with what I had, but it would definitely have looked better with more Mini Eggs.

I used a recipe from Lemony Loves Baking for the white chocolate and lemon mud cake but as the quantities were for a 6 layer cake I decided it was too big, so used two thirds of the quantities for all the ingredients.



I realised I didn't have any cream so just made a standard buttercream and used it with lemon curd in the cake. The cake was really moist and you could taste both the white chocolate and the lemon which was brilliant. So a big hat tip to Anna at Lemony Loves Baking for the recipe!



As for the Lakeland pouring kit - have you come across these before? I was a bit dubious that it was really necessary to spend £9.99 on a kit which is little more than a plastic base and a couple of rods, when I made this floating Malteser cake last year just using a plastic straw.

While the equipment cost pennies, it was a bit tricky to stick the Maltesers to the straw and they kept sliding off, so I had to do just a couple at a time and then put the whole cake in the fridge to set, and then do a few more, so the whole thing took hours and I needed a lot of space in the fridge - which I had at the time as we had not long before got a new American style fridge freezer and not yet gotten rid of our built-in larder fridge.

This year however the larder fridge has been removed and turned into an actual larder with pull-out shelving and my other fridge wouldn't have the space for a large and tall cake so I was a bit worried about what I would do if I needed to put the cake in the fridge. But I needn't have worried as it worked perfectly.

 

To start with, you decide if you want your floating element off to one side or in the middle, and screw the base rod into the appropriate hole and cover the other holes with blanking plates. Place the cake over the rod so it goes through the cake - it worked fine but it would probably have been more sensible to do this before I filled the cake, ie put one layer of cake over the rod, then spread over the filling and put the other cake on top, rather than put the entire cake over the rod!

Then screw the other part of the rod on top - you can either have it taller or longer depending on where you put the 'joint'.

I melted some milk chocolate in the microwave and put it in the fridge until it was very thick but still spreadable. I covered the top of the cake with buttercream and added the Mini Eggs, and then put the empty packet over the top of the bent part of the rod. Then all I had to do was put a dot of chocolate onto a Mini Egg and stick it to the rod and repeat. The eggs stuck fast right away and I didn't need to put it in the fridge at all.

As the final touch I spread the remaining buttercream around the edge of the cake and stuck white chocolate fingers around the sides, and then stuck a yellow polka dot ribbon around the base. A very nice Easter cake!

I'm sharing this as yet another entry with Alphabakes, the challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter she has chosen this month is C and this cake has plenty of white chocolate.

I'm also sharing this with Simply Eggcellent, hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen.

 

I'm sending this as well to Tea Time Treats, hosted by Jane at the Hedgecombers and Karen at Lavender and Lovage, as their theme is Easter and spring.

And finally I'm sending this to the Food Year Linkup, hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen.

Floating Malteser Cake for Comic Relief

 

 

Comic Relief is a hugely popular UK charity and the work it does to tackle poverty and social injustice around the world is fantastic. It has been going for 25 years this year and Red Nose Day – and now Sport Relief too – has become part of the British lexicon. Comedians and celebrities have been doing “something funny for money” since I was a child; last year Sport Relief (which takes place in alternate years with Red Nose Day) raised a whopping £71,800,000.

This year Red Nose Day falls on Friday March 13 and people all around the UK are being encouraged to “make their face funny for money”, whether that’s wear a wig, face paint, or have their eyebrows shaved off for charity. Comic Relief has also teamed up with the Great British Bake Off to help people organise bake sales in their communities or workplace – there’s nothing the British like more than a good old bake sale.

For that reason I’ve found myself pledging to make cakes for two different bake sales, one helpfully taking place the day before. I thought I’d share with you the cake that I’ve made, so if you are having a bake sale (or a bake off – this is something of a showstopper!) on Friday, you’ve still got time to make it.

Maltesers is one of the official partners of Red Nose Day this year and everyone loves chocolate, so I decided to make a maltesers cake. I’d seen pictures of cakes before which looked like they had a bag of Maltesers floating in the air, pouring chocolates onto the top of the cake – and since Red Nose Day is all about silliness and fun (with a good cause) I thought this would be the perfect cake.

My friend Ros aka The More Than Occasional Baker has made one of these cakes before and as I was fairly short of time, I went to her site to find out how to do it. I even used the same chocolate cake recipe she had used so I can’t claim any originality with this recipe at all – please hop on over to Ros’s site! The only change that I made was to use purely Maltesers rather than M&Ms as well.

The cake was pretty easy to make; you might be better off making it a day or so in advance and keeping in an air tight container if like me you are assembling the cake after work, as it needs to be completely cold.

Making the cake - see link above for recipe. In goes the chocolate, cocoa powder, butter and water.

Flour and eggs of course, and sour cream is the added ingredient to make this cake extra moist and tasty.

Ready to go in the oven

Now cooling

So this is the tricky part... to assemble the cake you need a lot of chocolate ganache. A lot.
Heat 300ml double cream in a large pan and when it is just simmering, take off the heat and add 600g chocolate. You can use plain or milk; I used milk as I prefer the flavour. Stir in the chocolate until it has melted.

Leave the ganache to cool before using - I put mine in the fridge for about half an hour.

Spread about 1/3 of the ganache on the bottom layer of cake and gently sandwich the other cake on top. Then spread a thin layer of the ganache around the side of the cake and stand up Kit Kats around the sides, facing inwards so the flat side faces outwards. I used 36 Kit Kat fingers for what I think was an 8-inch cake. You can either put them completely around the cake or as I have done, leave a gap at the front.

Spread about 2/3 - 3/4 of the remaining ganache over the top of the cake.

Push a plastic drinking straw into the cake, far enough in so it is stable but so you have plenty sticking out the top. Cover the top of the cake with Maltesers. Don't forget to keep one of the empty packets as you will need this later!

Slowly start building a tower of Maltesers. Dip each one in the chocolate ganache so it has a little dot of the chocolate mixture on it. Carefully stick to the straw, building up from the bottom. I found that I had to put the cake in the fridge after every two or three Maltesers, otherwise they would start to slide down.

Finally use some more ganache to stick the empty Malteser packet to the bent top part of the straw and finish sticking the Maltesers so the straw is completely covered. For the finishing touch I stuck more Maltesers down the front of the cake and on the cake board to look as if they were overflowing.

I'm really pleased with this and think this is the perfect cake for Comic Relief - it's fun and Maltesers is one of the official sponsors. I just hope it makes it into work on the train and bus OK!

I'm sharing this with the Alphabakes blog challenge which I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker; she has chosen the letter S this month and this cake uses sour cream.

I'm also sending this to Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes for Bookmarked Recipes.

 The theme for this month's We Should Cocoa is chocolate layer cakes so this fits in perfectly. The challenge is hosted this month by Sarah at Maison Cupcake on behalf of Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog.

 The cake also uses eggs which is my excuse to send it to Dom at Belleau Kitchen for his new challenge Simply Eggcellent.