Rainbow White Chocolate Mud Cake
Sooo.... It has only been, what... about a year since I last
wrote anything. A year of working far too much. But now that 2013 is
approaching the lesson learnt is to spend less time fussing over work and more
time fussing over flour, sugar and eggs! Unless of course the world perishes on
December 21 this year...
On to more positive things: despite work, I managed to bake
a couple of things, which leaves me with a backlog of posts. I’m going to start
with this one though – its colourful, cheerful, popular and never fails to
impress. The most important thing, for your sanity rather than anything else is
to be prepared and organised.
So here goes –
Rainbow white chocolate cake!
The recipe for this has already been posted before; however
I will post it again here. Unless you want to make a HUGE cake, you will need
small cake tins (I used small 6-8” spring form tins). The general idea is that
you make one batch of the cake mix, split it up into 6 even portions (or
however many layers you want) and bake each one in a separate tin. Once this is
done you can cut them up, stack them and ice them – there are pictures below
for this also.
White Chocolate Mud
Cake
165g Unsalted Butter
100g White Chocolate
1 1/3cup Caster
Sugar
2/3cup
Milk
1cup Plain Flour
1/3cup Self Raising Flour
1/2
tsp Vanilla Essence
1 Egg
Baking time: 40-50 min (the smaller the tin, the
less time it will take; best to keep your keen eyes on it/them)
1. Grease and line tin, ensuring that the paper
extends 5 cm above the edge of the tin. Otherwise grease well (I’ve done both
ways and both have been fine for me)
2. Weigh your empty bowl and take note of this
measurement (trust me, you’ll need this).
3. Combine chopped butter, chopped chocolate, sugar
and milk in a heat proof pan above a saucepan of simmering water until
chocolate and sugar are melted. Trick here is to keep moving it from above the
saucepan to away from it.
The
reason is that the bowl (and everything in it) will hold heat in it, even when
it is not directly over the heat – this is important because chocolate can be
temperamental. Heat it too much and it will split (the oil will split from the
milk solids and the texture is ‘ruined’). So keep on the heat to start with,
when it starts melting move it on and off the heat, stirring it constantly.
When it is almost entirely melted, remove from the heat and see if you can’t smooth
out the consistency using the remaining heat in the bowl and stirring it. Only
return to the heat briefly if it is clear the last bits aren’t melting
properly.
Once
melted, let sit for about 10-15min to bring it back to room temperature
(approx). The mixture won’t go hard again because of the milk and butter now
incorporated into the solids.
This is what it should look like when fully melted.
3. Sift in flours, essence and lightly beaten eggs.
It is a good idea to alternate between these. Mix through until the mixture is
smooth and consistent. The reason beater are not used is to avoid incorporating
more air than you want/need to.
4. Weigh your bowl again, now that you’ve finished
the mixture. Subtract the weight of the empty bowl from this weight – you now
know how much your mixture weighs. Divide the weight of your mixture by how
many different layer or colours you want. If you are going to do the 6 as
pictured above – divide by 6 J Now you know how much mixture to add to each batch
and/or tin so that you have 6 cakes exactly the same (except for the colours!)
Depending
on whether you have 6 cake tins, or not you can either:
a) Divide the mixture into 6 bowls and add a different
colour to each one, stirring until combined, and pour one into each cake tin
b) Pour one portion (1/6th) of the mixture
into a separate bowl, colour, pour into cake tin, bake, repeat until you have
baked all layers in the desired colours
5. Bake in moderately slow oven, cover with foil
half way through if it is browning up too quickly. Test with skewer to see if
it is ready – stick a skewer into the cake. If it come out ‘clean’ it is
cooked. By ‘clean’ it just means ‘no wet cake mixture’, it’s ok to have a bit
of moisture from the heat. If you wait until there is no moisture on the skewer
it is probably overcooked.
6. Cool in tin before turning out and ensure the
cake is completely cooled before trimming.
7. To trim, you want to cut off the dome that would
have formed on the top of the cake. This is easier said than done. It is really
important to ensure that the blade is perfectly parallel to the bench to avoid
cutting on of the layers so that it is taller on one side than the other – if you
do this, when you stack all the layers, you will end up with a lopsided,
unbalanced cake.
Perhaps the engineers out there have a
better technique, but in the absence of a proper cake cutting tool, either
measure and mark points around the edge of cake at a given distance from the
bottom... so, if your layers are going to be 2 inches high, measure and mark
2inches from the bottom of the cake, resting on the bench; then use a long bladed
knife and cut slowly, ensuring that the blade is always lining up to and
cutting through the points you’ve marked.
Alternatively, place two objects of the
same height, and distance them the width of the cake away from each other. Rest
either end of a long knife blade on each of the objects and cut the cake by
moving the cake along the blade (rather than keeping the cake still and moving
the blade through the cake....) I hope that made sense. I took a photo of what
I mean... even though there is no cake :/
Once you have done this, for all of
your beautifully coloured cakes, you will have an arrangement that looks
something like this.... (I made so much that I cut each one of my smaller cake
into three – just in case you were wondering what was going on in the picture.
The three bits of foil are my three, home-made, disposable cake trays, so I don’t
give away plates that never get returned.)
8. You will notice the bowl to the left hand side –
this is butter cream, however you could use cream-cheese icing etc. You’ll need
something to stick everything together though. Butter cream is literally
unsalted butter with icing sugar whipped/beaten through it. I always do this to
taste, rather than follow a recipe as it is all about how YOU like it.
Likewise, cream cheese icing is a block of cream cheese, whipped with icing
sugar. You can add a bit of lemon juice to lift the flavour, or add some cream
to smooth it out – up to you J
9. Start assembling! Start with the colour you’d
like on the bottom, slap an even layer of some of the icing on the top, then
place the next colour you’d like on top of that – repeat. You will have something
that looks a little like this.....
10. Once you have completed all
the layers, it is time to ice the outside – cover with an even a layer of icing
as you like – You can fill in any gabs etc. you have at this point. You can
cover it in white icing, or coloured icing – entirely up you to have fun with.
ENJOY!
One last thing – I didn't cut mine
as evenly as I could and so I ended up with a couple of leaning towers :/ This
is what the skewers were for – to keep the kids upright. Not perfect, but it
worked – next time I will cut my cakes more evenly.
