Chocolate Celebration Cake

So this has been a busy week of baking and not much time to blog post so I am definitely playing catch-up - and we’re only half-way through January! I don’t often blog about my celebration cakes but I had lots of fun with different techniques for this cake so I thought I would share some of the elements that went into making it.

This was made for the husband of a dear friend and I usually make cakes covered in fondant for them. But this time we decided to go for something a bit different and this chocolate ganache drip cake was born. I made a 7 inch Chocolate Truffle Torte, split it into 3 layers and then filled and covered it with Chocolate Ganache Buttercream before adding a Chocolate Ganache drip. This is not for the chocolate faint-hearted as within its celebratory exterior, 725g dark chocolate lurks within – but I’m a firm believer that birthday cake calories definitely don’t count ;-)

Katherine Sabbath is the queen of these drip cakes with an array of fabulous colours. There is a great blog post of Katherine’s tips for styling these drip cakes from Delish here including some mini video footage that I love referring to when making these cakes.

So when you come to decorate the cake, you can use whatever comes to hand. Maracons, chocolate bark, sweeties and chocolates you have in the house, pretzels – the list goes on. As this was a special birthday cake, I wanted to make three decorations that were in keeping with the brown and gold theme. Sugar Glass, Meringue Bark and Honeycomb.

Sugar Glass

The glass is made from sugar and cocoa nibs. It’s very easy to make with just these two ingredients.

Ingredients

• 200G CASTER SUGAR
• 2 TBSP COCOA NIBS (or any other toppings you think would look good in the glass)

Method

1.  Melt 200g caster sugar in a saucepan over a low heat
2. By the time all this sugar has melted, it should have turned a lovely caramel colour and be time to take it off the stove
3. Poured this on a baking tray lined with silpat and spread it out with a spatula - this is the time to create swirly edges that will be really interesting when you come to break it into shards
4.  Pop it in the fridge and let it set
5. Once set, break it into different shaped shards

Note: once set and out of the fridge, it can go a bit sticky in room temperature so break it up straight from the fridge and store it covered and in a cool place.

Honeycomb

Crunchies remain one of my favourite chocolate bars - and I was so excited the first time I made honeycomb. I've had my share of misses now with the temperature of honeycomb (making delicious toffee in the process!) so now I always use a thermometer and don't chance getting the state of readiness wrong by the colour alone.

I usually make a block of honeycomb and then break it up and coat it with chocolate. This time I wanted to see if I could made shaped honeycomb sweets by pouring it into molds. Due to the speed of the stage when the bicarb is added and then getting it into the tin, I had time to take 6 teaspoons of the honeycomb and get them into the molds. By the time I got the remaining mix into the bigger tin, it was deflated. It still tasted good when it was set but had lost its volume. I wasn't too concerned about this as I wanted to blitz the honeycomb to make a fine crumb that could be sprinkled across the cake.

Ingredients

• 200G CASTER SUGAR
• 100G GOLDEN SYRUP
• 2 TSP BICARBONATE OF SODA

Method

1. Grease the tin and line it with baking parchment
2. Heat the caster sugar and golden syrup over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved (around 10 minutes) - it can be stirred at this stage but no stirring as soon as the sugar has dissolved!
3. Pop in a candy thermometer and heat the sugar to 160 degrees celcius
4. When the temperature's reached , remove it from the heat and quickly stir in the bicarb until it's fully mixed in
5. At this stage, I scooped out 6 teaspoons of the honeycomb and put them into a silicone candy mold (each cavity had 1 teaspoon) - if you're just making one block, then pour it all into the prepared baking tin
6. Leave to set at room temperature
7. Once set, this can be broken up into pieces
8. To cover with chocolate, melt the chocolate in the microwave, removing it when the chocolate is almost but not quite melted and then stir until melted completely
9. Dip the honeycomb pieces into the honeycomb or fully immerse them using a fork and then leave to set on a piece of baking parchment
10. To make the honeycomb dust to sprinkle on the top of the cake, take some honeycomb (without chocolate) and blitz it in the food processor until you reach your desired level of consistency

Meringue Bark

from the Meringue Girls Everything Sweet

I love meringue. My very favourite treat is macarons but I love how versatile meringue is in creating edible prettiness. I saw this in the Meringue Girls Everything Sweet and wanted to try Meringue Bark rather than Chocolate Bark. It’s the same recipe as their kisses, just treated a little differently.

Ingredients

• 150G CASTER SUGAR
• 75G EGG WHITES (I use Two Chicks)
• DECORATION (these can be customised to your favourite sweeties and toppings)
  • For example, Cocoa Powder, Pearl Balls, Silver Nonpareils, Chocolate Covered Popping Candy, Melted Dark Chocolate

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees (fan)
2. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper and spread out the sugar evening across it
3. Bake for 7 minutes in the oven
4. In the meantime, whisk the egg whites in a standalone mixer, slowly at first and then increasing the speed – you want the egg whites to reach stiff peak at the same time as the sugar’s 7 minutes in the oven is up
5. Put the mixer on full speed and add the hot sugar a spoonful at a time, allowing each spoonful to be fully incorporated and return to stiff peak before adding the next one
6. When all the sugar has been added, mix for at least 5 minutes until you can rub a little of the meringue between your thumb and forefinger and it no longer feels grainy
7. Turn the oven down to 100 degrees (fan)
8. If you’re making meringue kisses, put your mixture into a piping bag and pipe rounds onto a lined baking tray, pulling up at the end to create a little peak
9. These should take around 40 minutes in the oven and are ready when the meringue can be removed cleanly from the baking paper
10. If you’re making meringue bark, spread the meringue out over a lined baking tray until it’s 0.5cm deep.
11. Add any decorations you like right now – I used a sprinkling of cocoa powder, pearl balls, silver nonpareils and chocolate covered popping candy
12. Bake for 1 hour until the meringue bark can be lifted cleanly from the baking tray
13. When it’s cool, drizzle melted dark chocolate across the bark
14. When the chocolate has set, break the meringue into shards of different sizes

Chocolate Doughnuts with Chocolate Ganache

It's Friday. It's half term. It couldn't have come sooner.

What better way to celebrate a week off together than with Chocolate Doughnuts. The boys had a playdate so I thought I'd make these doughnuts that I've had my eye on for a while. I made Pumpkin Doughnuts not long ago and both these and the chocolate ones are baked rather than deep fried (I will get to deep frying doughnuts at some point but these seem just that little bit healthier).

This recipe is adapted from one by Manuela Kjeilen who has the most fabulous blog called Passion 4 Baking. Think pink. Think retro kitchens. Think complete inspiration. I've looked through most of her recipes and there are so many things I'd love to make, but one bake that stuck in my mind was her doughnuts.

One of the main ingredients is Jell-o Instant Pudding Powder which is an American product that I dug out in the supermarket when I was in Canada over the summer. I adapted Manuela's Delicious Baked Vanilla Donuts recipe to make a chocolate version so I used the Chocolate Jell-o Pudding Powder in mine. It's fair to say that my baked doughnuts don't look that chocolatey and flavour-wise weren't that chocolatey either so after going to great lengths to get this pudding mix, I think cocoa powder would work well next time. But I'm pretty happy with the results from this first batch.

The doughnuts have yeast in them and their texture is very bread-like. They're left to prove twice which means they need a little longer to make but this really helps give them their fluffy texture. The first batch I made looked like Manuela's but I found that after they'd proved and been in the oven, they expanded so much that they almost joined together and the hole all but vanished. So the ones on the right below were my second batch which don't look as pretty pre-baking, but give the customary hole in the middle and much better post-baking look.

I would say that the doughnuts themselves don't have a huge amount of flavour (which I think would be enhanced by the addition of cocoa powder) so the toppings are really important and I decided to use a rich dark ganache and a helping of sprinkles. I love the flavour of the really rich chocolate ganache and the crunchy little non-appareils.

They take a little more time because of the proving but these are a fun little bake.

And if you're looking for ways to allay half term boredness, then kids would love to be chief decorators :)

Chocolate Doughnuts with Chocolate Ganache Makes 20 (adapted from Passion 4 Baking's Delicious Baked Vanilla Donuts)

Chocolate Doughnut Ingredients

• 30G BUTTER, MELTED
• 350ML WARM MILK
• 7G FAST ACTION BREAD YEAST
• 150G CASTER SUGAR
• 1 PACKET JELL-O CHOCOLATE INSTANT PUDDING POWDER
• PINCH OF SALT
• 2 EGGS
• 625G PLAIN FLOUR

Chocolate Ganache

• 100g WHIPPING CREAM
• 100G DARK CHOCOLATE, CHOPPED
• SPRINKLES

Method

1. Firstly, melt the butter and put aside
2. Heat the milk so it's warm but not hot and place in a mixing bowl
3. Sprinkle the yeast over the top
4. Add the melted butter and mix together
5. Add the sugar, instant pudding powder, salt and flour
6. Mix these ingredients together with a dough hook until the ingredients are combined
7. Add the flour and continue to mix with the dough hook until smooth and elastic (around 8-10 minutes)
8. Turn the dough into a lightly greased bowl, cover and leave to double in size for around 1 hour
9. Lightly flour a work surface and then roll out the dough until it's around 1 cm thick
10. I used the Wilton Mini Doughnut Pan so found that a 6cm cutter and 3.5cm piping nozzle were the right sizes for this
11. Put these doughnuts into the pan, cover with a clean cloth and leave for an hour
12. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees (fan)
13. Bake the doughnuts for around 8-10 mins until golden brown on the outside
14. When ready, turn out the doughnuts onto a cooling rack
15. Make the ganache by heating the cream until it's just boiling and then pour over the chocolate slowly
16. Leave for few minutes and then stir together until all the chocolate lumps have disappeared
17. Hold one of the doughnuts upside down and swirl it in a circular motion in the chocolate until you have an even coating on the top (use a spoon to help spread this if needed)
18. Top with your favourite sprinkles :)

Butterscotch Cake

Well, four weeks has flown by and it's back to school with a bump for the boys (and me!) We had a fun last day yesterday and treated ourselves to seeing Home, even enjoying the entire cinema to ourselves :) The boys thought this was fantastic (the film and having the whole screening for just us!) Then back home in the afternoon to make an end of holiday treat for the boys.

The recipe for this Butterscotch Cake comes from Treatology by Wilton and I was directed to it by the fantastic Man Bakes Cake. This is an American recipe and uses shortening in the buttercream (I use Trex here in the UK). This is the first time I've used shortening in a buttercream like this and having tasted it, I have to say that I'm a full-butter buttercream kind of girl. The cake itself is light and moist; the buttercream with chocolate chips and butterscotch is tasty (as mentioned, in my humble opinion would be improved by 100% butter | 0% shortening); but the winner of this recipe for me is the delicious butterscotch ganache which is added to the buttercream to give it a butterscotch flavour and then the pure ganache is drizzled over the top. This part is definitely a keeper!

Next time I make this, I think a chocolate cake would be pretty tasty with full-butter butterscotch buttercream (what a mouthful!) and then the butterscotch ganache over the top. Or even transformed into cupcakes would be super tasty too with a drizzle of the butterscotch ganache over the top. Yum!

I didn't manage to get many photos of the this before the boys dived in with a large slice each - although it was for them to celebrate the end of a fab holiday so who can blame them?!

Butterscotch Cake (from Treatology by Wilton)

Ingredients

Butterscotch Cake

• 340G PLAIN FLOUR
• 2 TSPS BAKING POWDER
• 1 TSP SALT
• 170G BUTTER
• 160G DARK BROWN SUGAR
• 3 EGGS
• 2 TSPS VANILLA EXTRACT
• 240 ML MILK

Butterscotch Icing and Ganache

• 300G BUTTERSCOTCH CHIPS
• 120ML DOUBLE CREAM
• ¼  TSP SALT
• 230G BUTTER
• 115G SHORTENING (I USED TREX)
• 375G SIFTED ICING SUGAR
• 50G CHOCOLATE CHIPS

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees
2. Lightly grease 3 baking tins - the recipe calls for a Wilton 6 inch Cake Pan Set but I used 3 7-inch cake tins
3. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt
4. In a separate bowl, beat the sugar and butter until light and fluffy
5. Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition. If the mixture looks like it's curdling a little, add a tablespoon of the flour mixture
6. Add the vanilla and mix well
7. Add one third of the flour mixture and mix until just combined and then add half of the milk
8. Repeat ending with the final flour addition and mix until just combined - don't over mix otherwise this will toughen the mixture
9. Divide evenly amongst the tins and bake for 20 minutes until a skewer comes out clean
10. For the ganache, combine the butterscotch chips, cream and salt. Then microwave for 1 minute and stir. Continue to microwave in 30 second bursts (this stage took me a further 2 minutes). I then stirred the mixture until it was almost melted but there were still traces of unmelted butterscotch chips so I kept heating it at 15 second bursts until the butterscotch was smooth.
11. Put the butterscotch to one side and allow to cool
12. In a separate bowl, beat the butter and shortening and then add one third of the icing sugar on medium until well mixed. Continue until all the icing sugar is incorporated.
13. Add 2/3 of the cooled butterscotch and beat until well combined
14. Remove around 2 cups of the butterscotch buttercream and put to one side
15. Add the chocolate chips to the original bowl of buttercream
16. Then level the cakes if necessary and prepare to assemble
17. Put one of the cakes on a plate and then add half of the chocolate chip buttercream spreading it to the edge of the cake.
18. Top with the second cake, the remaining chocolate chip buttercream and the final cake.
19. Then use the remaining non-chocolate chip buttercream to cover the top and sides of the cake and refrigerate until the icing is set
20. When completely chilled, take the remaining butterscotch and blast it in the microwave for 10-15 seconds and then drizzle over the top of the cake
21. Optional: I took some of the leftover non-chocolate chip buttercream and piped a few swirls on top and then scattered some chocolate coated popping candy on the top