Chocoholic Birthday Cake with Cadbury Twirl

My fiancé is a total chocoholic so for his birthday this month I wanted to make him an awesome chocolate cake. I have a lot of baking books and they pretty much all have chocolate cake recipes - so where to start?

I realised I hadn't baked anything from my Outsider Tart book, Baked in America, for a little while. Outsider Tart is a bakery in Chiswick that is meant to be amazing, though I've never actually been there (even though I live in a different London borough it would take me about an hour and a half to get there - but I'm starting to think it might be worth the trip!). The bakery is run by two Americans who have brought a lot of new techniques to their baking and new ideas to 'bridge the culinary divide'. What they have also done is provide some amazingly decadent, delicious recipes that approach baking in ways that you wouldn't necessarily have thought of.

The cake I made is called "Coke layers" and is on p175 of their book Baked in America. I know that it's possible to reproduce a recipe on a blog, because the original author can copyright the ingredients but not the way they have described the method, but in a way this cake is as much about the method as the ingredients so I wouldn't feel quite right reproducing it without their permission (if I get around to asking and getting permission I will update this post!). After all, have you ever made a chocolate cake using buttermilk, oil, AND butter and 5 eggs.... but more to the point, using marshmallows and Coca-Cola?

I'm going to share with you some of the process I went through. The recipe makes three layers of cake, and half way through adding the ingredients I realised I was going to end up with a LOT of cake -far too much in fact as I was only catering for a meal with my fiancé's parents, not a huge party (that will come next year, when he's 40!).

Starting off by melting butter with the Coca Cola

adding marshmallows and chocolate

Mixing the sugar, oil and vanilla

Here it is after adding the eggs - all 5 of them

Now adding in the cooled chocolate mixture

Two layers about to go in the oven

After baking - three giant layers of cake!

I made a ganache from melted chocolate and sour cream and spread it between two layers

I spread more on top and decorated the top with Twirl Bites

I then decided it needed ganache around the side and more Twirl Bites on top!

I actually ended up with all three layers of the cake baked and decided it was just too big and put one layer in the freezer! I also used self-raising flour rather than plain flour and raising agents, and milk chocolate rather than plain - which would have made the cake sweeter but actually it wasn't an incredibly sweet cake in itself, but the icing was. Mmm, the icing....

I made the chocolate sour cream fudge frosting from the same book to spread in between the layers and on the to, then ran out of sour cream so made a chocolate ganache with double cream which I spread around the sides. I then decorated the top with Cadbury Twirl bites as they were the perfect little chunks of chocolate - slightly unevenly shaped and 'rock' like which appealed to me for this cake.

My fiancé absolutely loved the cake and said it was one of the best I've ever made and I'm inclined to agree. It was light and moist; the cake itself wasn't too sweet but the icing was deliciously decadent.

As I used Twirl on top I'm sharing this with Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker as the letter I've chosen is T.

I'm also sharing this with Love Cake, hosted by Ness at JibberJabberUK. Her chosen ingredient this month is things you can drink, and this cake includes Coca-Cola.

Pink Ombre Wedding Cake and How To Make Pink Sugar Flowers

Pink three-tier wedding cake

- How to make a pink wedding cake

- How to make a pink ombre cake with each layer a different shade of pink

- How to make realistic sugar flowers

- How to decorate a pink cake

- Can you freeze cake

..... all these questions will be answered in this post!
 

This cake was a real labour of love so I think deserves a big blog post. It isn't actually a wedding cake but I think would work very well as one, perhaps with another one or two layers. I made it for a bake sale at work that was raising money for Breast Cancer - the charity with the pink ribbon campaign, so the theme was pink. The bake sale was meant to be a 'bake off', judged by a senior member of staff with a prize provided by a local business, but for various reasons the competitive element was cancelled. I wish I'd known that in advance as I might not have spent so much time and money on making this cake! Even so I'm very proud of it, it helped raise a good amount of money for charity and it's great to be able to share this cake and how I went about making it with you all.

 

To begin with I made the sugar flowers; as I was making them from flower paste they were intended to harden and I knew I could make them at the weekend (the bake sale was on Thursday and I knew I wouldn't have time during the week).

 

I bought various things after watching a sugar flower demonstration at Cake International two years ago that I still hadn't used so it was about time! Here you can see an Iris petal cutter which I used to cut out some large petals from Renshaw's pink flower paste.



 

Here are stamens and florist tape - the only non-edible part of the flowers.

I also had two smaller Iris petal cutters which I used for the inner petals. Take a few stamen and bind them together with the florist tape then take your first petal and wrap it around the stamens, quite tightly at the bottom but more open at the top. Start with a smaller petal and place a few of these around the stamen, overlapping each one.

Then add a couple of the bigger petals and curve them outwards at the edges. I placed them on this drying rest; they dry hard quite quickly. Keep whatever flower paste you are not using covered up.

I made three of these, but in the end could only fit two on the cake.

I also used this blossom flower cutter to make some smaller flowers to cascade down the side of the cake. I've explained in more detail how to use the cutter and embosser on this post on wedding cupcakes.

I made a whole pile of these and left them to dry.

As for the cake: I wanted to make each layer of cake a different shade of pink so I thought it was important to use a simple sponge recipe. I went for a 6/6/6 cake - that is, 6oz of flour, 6oz caster sugar and 6 oz butter, and 3 eggs. The sponge turned out really well, very light and tasty.

I made several quantities of this cake mixture and used more for the first few layers as I was using a bigger cake tin; so in total I made three batches of this cake mixture but it wasn't evenly used across the three tiers of the cake. I didn't make a note of exactly what quantities I used for each cake unfortunately!

I used Sugarflair pink colourpaste for three of the layers and fuchsia for the fourth. I added a tiny amount of the pink to the cake mixture and spread a very thin layer on the bottom of a greased 10-inch cake tin, and baked that in the oven for about 12-15 minutes.

I then added a little more of the same pink food colouring to the cake mixture left in the bowl and repeated the procedure. I did that one more time with the pink (I think at this point I had to make more cake mixture) and then finally I used fuchsia for the last layer.

You can really see the difference in shades when they came out of the oven! My three-tier cooling rack came in very handy.

 

 For the final tier I made a very small cake in a 5-inch cake tin and did a marble effect, combining a spoonful of pink cake mixture with a spoonful of plain until the tin was filled.

 

As I knew I was going to be too busy in the days leading up to the bake sale, there was only one thing for it: I was going to have to freeze the cake. I looked up how to do this on the internet and discovered that you can't really freeze frosting but the actual sponge cake should be fine. Wrap each layer in clingfilm and carefully place in the freezer.

I would never been able to do this with the freezer in my last house as it was quite small, and had drawers which wouldn't have been wide enough for the biggest layer of cake. But when we bought the new house we treated ourselves to an American-style freezer (partly as my boyfriend wanted the ice dispenser but two months later it still hasn't been connected to the plumbing!). One real advantage is that the shelves are very deep so I had no problem sliding my layers of cake into the freezer. And rest assured the cake tasted absolutely fine when it came out of the freezer!

 

So the night before the bake sale I assembled the cake. I made a simple buttercream which I coloured pink and spread it very thinly between each layer of the cake.

I had to level off one layer of cake as it wasn't quite flat but otherwise the layers were all relatively uniform, and definitely came out in different shades of pink!

I was limited by having to carry this in my cake carry case to work so I made the bottom tier four layers thick and then covered it in pink fondant from Renshaw.

The next tier was two layers but the layers were thicker. The final cake on top didn't come out of the tin very well and left a chunk of itself behind which is why the top looks quite uneven.

I thought that covering the whole cake in pink was a bit much, plus I had some specific decorations in mind, so I covered the middle layer in white fondant.

 

I bought these printed sugar paper decorations from Culpitt after seeing their stand at the Cake and Bake Show. They are really easy to use - pre-cut circles you just pop out of the page. They are edible and the circles were a variety of sizes and patterns which I thought would look nice around the side of the cake, on the white layer. I also bought some pink ribbon from the same website to put around the pink layers.

So finishing the cake was quite easy. I didn't bother using dowels between the tiers - I never have done, though some people say it's essential. I'm doing a wedding cake course next year so hopefully I will find out more!

After covering each tier of the cake separately, I placed one on top of the other, securing with some buttercream in between. I wrapped the ribbon around the top and bottom layers and secured with some edible glue, and stuck the sugar paper circles around the white layer, again with edible glue. I placed two of the large sugar flowers on top and secured them with royal icing, and used royal icing to stick on the smaller flowers so they would look like they were cascading down the side of the cake. I was really pleased with the final result!

 

 

There aren't many blog challenges this month that I can share this cake with, which is a shame, as it doesn't fit any of the themes. But I can send it to Cook Blog Share, hosted by Lucy at Supergoldenbakes. 

 

 

Lemon Curd Swirl Cake

I made this cake for a picnic I went on yesterday; it was easy to make and travelled fairly well too. I based it partly on a recipe from Weightwatchers magazine but doubled the quantity and used different frosting.

To serve 8-10, you need:

225g butter or reduced fat margarine

150g caster sugar

4 eggs

225g self-raising flour

finely grated zest of 1 lemon

150g cream cheese

3 tbsp lemon curd

Preheat oven to 175C fan. Grease a loaf tin with cake release - or two tins if you have them. (You can either make two cakes and sandwich them together, or one big cake and slice it in half).

Cream the butter and sugar together.

Add the eggs and beat, then fold in the flour and the lemon zest.

 Spoon half the mixture into a loaf tin and repeat, or if you prefer, put all the mixture into one tin.

I baked my cake for 25 minutes then did the same again with the other half of the cake mixture. If you are making one cake with the whole mixture it will take longer to cook.

The recipe I used instructed me to mix 150g of 0% Greek yogurt with 1 tsp icing sugar to make the filling. It may have been because I was using Tesco Light Greek Yogurt but my mixture was extremely thin and runny and I didn't think I would be able to use it to fill the cake. Instead I made some cream cheese frosting using Philadelphia and icing sugar with a few drops of lemon juice.

I levelled off the top of the cake as it had risen a little too much.

Spread the cream cheese frosting on one half of the cake. I then warmed a couple of tablespoons of lemon curd in the microwave until it was runny, and swirled it through the cream cheese.

I then sandwiched the cakes together and used some of the same frosting and lemon curd on top, though I spread it in quite a thin layer as I was going to wrap the whole cake in tin foil to take to the picnic - I had quite a long way to go by public transport and on foot and had a lot to carry, so I decided this was the easiest way to transport the cake!

I'm sending this to Calendar Cakes, hosted by Rachel of DollyBakes and Laura of Laura Loves Cakes, as their theme this month is "pump up the jam" and they have asked for bakes using jam and curds. As I used lemon curd for the filling I am sending them this cake.

Cardamom Layer Cake with Raspberry and Rose Mascarpone

I recently received a copy of a recipe book called Cooking With Flowers, which shows you how you can use all sorts of flowers from the garden in your baking. It's a lovely looking book with some very unusual recipes and I decided I wanted to make something from the book for my mum as her birthday cake. I have to admit to being a rubbish gardener though; I don't know the names of 99% of the flowers in my garden (even the ones I planted myself!) and was a bit dubious about which ones were apparently edible. Roses are one of the few flowers I know (I did say I was rubbish!) and I was particularly taken by this recipe for a cardamom cake with raspberry and rose mascarpone; the picture looked pretty as well so I decided to make it.

I've adapted the quanties slightly (eg for the icing sugar as I found I needed more), but the quantity of egg whites is correct! You need: 

1 and 2/3 cup milk

8 egg whites

3 tsp vanilla extract

2 and 1/4 cups plain flour

2 and 1/2 cups caster sugar

6 tsp baking powder

1 and 3/4 tsp salt

1 tbsp ground cardamom

1 and 1/2 cups butter

petals from 2 roses

1 cup double cream

2 cups mascarpone cheese

8 tbsp icing sugar

1 tbsp rosewater

2 cups fresh raspberries

for the candied rose petals:

1 egg white

a few tbsp of caster sugar

Preheat oven to 180C. Pour 2/3 of a cup of milk into a measuring jug and add the egg whites and vanilla.

Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.

I couldn't find ground cardamom, only pods. I had to crush them with a pestle and mortar first:

then remove the shells and you have seeds. I did my best to crush these in a pestle and mortar but I didn't get a particularly fine powder, though it worked fine in the end. Add the cardamom to the flour mixture.

Add the remaining 1 cup of milk and mix well with an electric mixer; then add the butter and mix again.

Whisk in the egg white mixture a third at a time.

Divide the mixture into three greased and lined 8-inch cake tins and bake for about 25 mins.

 I didn't see the part of the recipe that said to cool the cakes in their pans for 15 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool completely; if you try to remove the cake from the tin too soon, this happens!

I learnt my lesson and the other parts of the cake were fine. It was a really moist, almost wet cake; the recipe book says you shouldn't fill it until shortly before serving. I made the cake the night before so waited until the next morning to make the filling.

I do have roses in my garden but unfortunately they are not in bloom yet and I couldn't wait as this cake was for my mum's birthday, so I bought myself a bunch of roses.

I wanted to make candied rose petals to decorate the cake with and needed to do this in advance. It's quite simple really - there are instructions at the back of the same recipe book. Separate the rose petals, whisk an egg white and brush the petals with egg white. Sprinkle them with sugar then leave to dry. I left these for two nights and found they hardened a bit but remained quite sticky. They looked good on the cake though in the end I didn't actually try eating one which was more an oversight than anything else!

To make the filling for the cake, place the remaining rose petals in a small bowl or glass with the double cream and leave to infuse overnight. When you are ready to use the cream, strain in a sieve and discard the rose petals.

Beat the cream, mascarpone, rosewater and icing sugar until thick.

Fold in the raspberries - keep a few aside for decoration

Mix again with the electric mixer to break the fruit up and turn the cream a lovely pink colour.

Spread a third of the cream on the bottom layer of the cake

Repeat with all three layers

Spread the remaining cream on top; I tried to pile it up in peaks (you could also pipe it on for a nicer effect).

Decorate the top with raspberries and the candied rose petals

Here's the finished cake - I thought it looked quite pretty and it tasted fantastic. The cake was so light and moist - I've never made a cake with 8 egg whites before - and the raspberry and rose mascarpone filling was creamy and delicious. You could make a variation on this with strawberries or perhaps replace the cardamom with another flavour like lavender - let me know if you decide to experiment!

I'm sending this to Alphabakes, the baking blog challenge I host with The More Than Occasional Baker. Ros is hosting this month and the letter she has randomly chosen is R - so R is for rose and raspberry.

The theme for this month's Tea Time Treats is layer cakes so this cake also fits the bill. Tea Time Treats is hosted by Karen of Lavender and Lovage and Kate of What Kate Baked.

By luck this month's ingredient for the One Ingredient Challenge, hosted by Nazima of Franglais Kitchen and Laura of How To Cook Good Food is raspberries, so this cake is perfect for this challenge as well.

Raspberries are in season so I am also sending this to Simple and In Season, hosted by Ren at Fabulicious Food.

Update: I am also sending this to Love Cake, hosted by Jibber Jabber UK, as the theme this month is flowers.