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.

Bucket of Maltesers Chocolate Birthday Cake

This is the cake I made for my boyfriend's birthday last week; it was very popular with his family and also his work colleagues so I would say it was definitely a success. I was going to use a recipe for chocolate buttermilk cake from Tea With Bea (recipes from Bea's of Bloomsbury) but the carton of buttermilk I bought split on the way home so I ended up with a carrier bag full of buttermilk which had to go in the bin. I needed to make the cake that evening and had nowhere local that would stock buttermilk; I know you can make buttermilk yourself by adding a dash of lemon juice to milk, but instead I just adapted the recipe. The idea for the decoration was also my own so I guess I can say that this is an original recipe.

Bucket of Maltesers Chocolate Birthday Cake - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

You need:

225g plain chocolate

60g cocoa powder

175g butter

4 eggs

300g caster sugar

175g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

150ml milk

For the buttercream:

150g margarine or butter, softened

300g icing sugar

60g chocolate, melted

For the chocolate ganache:

200g milk chocolate

100ml double cream

For the decorations:

Approximately three packs of Cadbury's chocolate fingers

Large pack (200g) maltesersl;po09

Edible gold shimmer spray e.g. from Dr. Oetker

Start by making the cake. Preheat the oven to 180C. Melt the chocolate and butter in a small pan over a medium heat, and stir until melted. Then stir in the cocoa powder until smooth.

In a separate bowl whisk the eggs and sugar.

Fold in the chocolate mixture then mix in the flour, bicarb of soda and the milk.

Grease and line a baking tin or spray with Cake Release. I used an 8-inch cake tin which meant the cake was very deep and took quite a long time to cook in the oven; you may prefer a 9 inch tin.

Bake for 1 hour in the oven, testing with a skewer. The cake rose quite a lot so I ended up slicing off some of the top.

You can see here how deep the cake is!

When the cake has cooled (first in the tin then on a cooling rack) trim the top so it is flat and cut the cake through the middle so you have two layers.

Make the buttercream: cream the margarine or softened butter with the icing sugar. Melt the chocolate in a bain marie or the microwave and mix in to the buttercream when it has cooled. Spread between the two layers of the cake.

Spray the maltesers with edible gold spray, following the instructions on the can. I think it's best to do this on newspaper or kitchen towel so you don't mess up your work surface. Leave the maltesers to dry for a few minutes.

To make the chocolate ganache, melt the chocolate in a small saucepan and add the cream; the mixture will thicken quite quickly as it cools. When it has cooled enough to put in the fridge, refrigerate for about half an hour.

Spread the chocolate ganache around the side of the cake and stick the chocolate fingers around the cake.

Spread the rest of the chocolate ganache on top of the cake.

Then fill the top of the cake with the gold maltesers.

Here's a view of the cake from the top

... and from the side.

 Yum....

Delicious!

I think this would also be a good cake to make at Easter; the maltesers look a little bit like small eggs or you could also fill the top of the cake with mini eggs. So I am sending this to a few Easter-themed blog challenges:

Choclette's We Should Cocoa, guest-hosted by Rachel Cotterill

Love Cake, hosted by JibberJabberUK

Walnut espresso layer cake

This is a slightly adapted Walnut Espresso Layer cake from Outsider Tart's Baked in America that I made for my boyfriend's mum's birthday. I asked her what flavour cake she would like and she said coffee; since she gave me the Outsider Tart book for my birthday a few weeks before, I thought it would be nice to make something from that.

Outsider Tart's Walnut Espresso Layers Cake
Ingredients
walnuts - 9oz/ 250g/ 1.5 cups
all-purpose or plain flour - 20oz/ 550g/ 3.75 cups
baking powder - 1.5 tsp
bicarbonate of soda- 1.5 tsp
kosher salt - 0.75 tsp
instant espresso powder - 3 tbsp
buttermilk, at room temperature - 8 fl oz/ 240ml / 1 cup
brewed triple strength espresso - 6 fl oz / 175 ml/ 0.75 cup
vanilla extract - 1 tbsp
unsalted butter, softened - 12oz/ 340g / 1.5 cups
granulated sugar - 12oz/ 340g / 1.5 cups
light brown sugar - 6oz / 175g/ 0.75 cup, packed
large eggs - 6

Preheat the oven to 180 C/ 350 F/ gas mark 4. Butter three 9in/ 7.5cm round cake pans, line the bottoms with baking parchment, dust with flour and tap out any excess.

In a food processor, pulse the walnuts until finely ground. It's better to pulse versus running the motor to avoid making a paste.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt, espresso powder and the ground walnuts.

In a large measuring jug combine the buttermilk, brewed espresso and vanilla. Set both aside.
In a stand mixer, cream together the butter and both sugars on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 5-6 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition. Scrape the bowl as you go.

On low speed, alternately add the flour/nut and buttermilk mixtures in 3-4 additions until just combined. The batter may have a slightly curdled appearance, which is just fine. Divide the mixture evenly among the prepared pans.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a knife inserted comes out clean. It's best to rotate the pans front to back, top to bottom, about three quarters of the way through. Cool the layers in their pans for about ten minutes before turning them out on wire racks to cool completely.

This is in fact where the recipe ends, as the book has a separate chapter on frostings. I couldn't find a coffee flavour frosting so I decided to make a normal buttercream and flavour it with coffee - though it didn't have a strong a flavour as I would have liked, as that was the point when I ran out of coffee!

I have to admit that I don't actually drink coffee, and so only keep instant in the house, and didn't particularly want to buy espresso powder just for this cake, so I - whispers - used instant coffee where the recipe specified espresso. I'm sorry, Outsider Tart! Hope you forgive me... the cake tasted pretty good anyway!

I also decided I didn't need a massive cake as it was only going to serve a few people, so I made 2/3 of the recipe quantity and only made two layers instead of three - it still turned out to be a fairly deep cake.
I assembled the layers like this

I filled a piping bag with the buttercream

And piped a swirly pattern on the top. But this somehow just wasn't enough for a birthday cake and I tried to think of a way to decorate it...

... and hit on the idea of maltesers! I arranged them in two circles and also inserted some florists' wire into a few maltesers and stood them in the top of the cake, which was an idea I saw on the internet somewhere. I really like the way it turned out!

Walnut and Espresso Layer Cake recipe from Baked in America by David Muniz and David Lesniak, published by Ebury Press. Used by permission of the authors, The Random House Group Limited and Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

(Photographs are my own)
The book can be purchased on Amazon, Random House or Outsider Tart.

As the letter for this month's Alphabakes challenge is W, I am entering my walnut and espresso layer cake. I am also sending it to Cupcake Crazy Gem's United Bakes of America blogging challenge, as Outsider Tart is an American bakery in London and the recipe book, Baked in America, is full of goodies from there.