How To Make A Magical St Patrick's Cake

Mar 12

Mar 12 How To Make A Magical St Patrick's Cake

Hey hey! How are you spending St Patrick's Day this year?? I was gonna be a total loser and stay in with a pint of hazelnut ice cream but thankfully my lovely friend set me straight. She’s got us lined up for seeing some bands, doing some drinking and no doubt a little dancing. The only thing drunk me ever says is, “Please, please, please can we go to the dancing???”. I’m like parents with ‘The Facebook’. Can I add though that I don’t add ‘s’ to the end of Asda, Tesco or Aldi so I’m not a complete monster.

Obviously since I’m doing a St Paddy’s Day cake I had to fill it with Guinness and thankfully I found a gorgeous recipe from Domestic Gothess. It’s rich and chocolatey and kinda fudgy which I LOVE! Like, honestly, everything you want in a cake. Even if you’re not a big fan of Guinness, this cake will still float your boat. I’m more of an IPA kinda woman myself but this cake got me drooling. And the style of her whole site just makes me swoon, like serious food photography envy, full on green-eyes. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before but not all UK recipes work elsewhere because of some weird flour thing so for this, if you’re in North America can I suggest heading over to Liv For Cake, she’s a serious cake genius.

Oh, almost forgot, I’ve been asked a few times this week why I always bake in 6-inch pans. Here’s the thing, if I made them bigger, I’d eat them bigger. Like I have no self-control and a hatred of waste, so I just scale it back. But, if you’re baking for a party or something you can totally scale up, in fact, I’d love to see that, send me your snaps.

I’m gonna get going with the cake soon I promise but, just for a second can I hit you up for some help? For a couple weeks now I’ve been completely obsessed with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend on Netflix, if you haven’t seen it yet, please go binge it. Now! Trust me, it’s not what you think it is, it handles mental health and sexism and stereotypes in the most responsible way and makes you totally question a ton of things you take for granted. And! All of this comes with comedy genius and the most amazing soundtrack you could ever come across. Seriously, it’s been on my Spotify all week. So, here’s the thing, the helping hand I’m in need of. I wanna make a Crazy Ex cake and I do not know where to start. I think it’s cos I just wanna sing every time I think about it but that’s not a visual medium and cake is. I have like cake block or something. Set me free! Send me your ideas, hit me up with that crazy ex cake magic. I’ll wait.

Ingredients

1 batch of Chocolate Stout Cake from Domestic Gothess

1 pack of Oreo’s (or any other sandwich cookie)

1 can of edible gold shimmer spray

375g butter

750g icing sugar

200g dark chocolate

200ml double cream

100g caster sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg white (pasteurised)

Pinch of salt

Squeeze of lemon juice

Food colouring

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Mix up your Chocolate Stout Cake batter and pour into two, lined, 6-inch cake pans. Bake for 55-60 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool for at least 30 minutes before removing from the pan otherwise they may break up. Leave to cool completely on a cake rack. When the cakes are cool, level off the tops with a knife and cut each cake into 2 layers. Try to be really careful, this cake is very soft and can easily fall apart. A little like me after a few too many beers. Wrap up the layers individually in cling film and place in the freezer overnight. Freezing them now will make it much easier to fill and stack them later.

The next day emove the cakes from the freezer and leave to thaw on the worktop. Roughly chop 200g of dark chocolate and place in a large metal bowl. In a pot, heat 200ml of double cream until just before boiling. Be careful not to let it come to the boil or it may burn. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and leave for 5 minutes. Gently mix the chocolate and cream together until smooth. If not all the chocolate has melted, heat the bowl over a bain-marie. Leave the ganache to completely cool and thicken. When it has thickened, build the cake with a layer of ganache between each sponge. Try to work pretty fast, the cold cakes will help set the ganache fairly quickly. When all the layers have been added, move to the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

While the cake is cooling, lay 9 Oreo’s across a piece of parchment paper and spray with edible gold shimmer. Leave to dry for 10 minutes, turn the cookies over and spray the other side. Leave to dry.

Beat together 375g of room temperature butter, 750g of icing sugar and 1 tsp of vanilla. The frosting should be thick but spreadable, if it’s too stiff, add a splash of milk until it’s the right consistency. Remove the cake from the fridge and apply a thin layer of buttercream all over the cake to pick up any loose crumbs. Smooth down the sides and top. Return the cake to the fridge. Split the remaining frosting into 6 equal portions. Colour these like the rainbow. Amanda there’s 7 colours in the rainbow! I know, I know, but I decided to go pastel with my palette and the pastel version of red is pink which is also a rainbow colour so I’m afraid I sacrificed it. Sorry! Transfer the 6 colours to separate icing bags.

Remove the cake from the fridge and mark out guidelines for each colour. You can be seriously dedicated with a tape measure or, like me you can just eyeball it. Pipe round a thick layer of each colour, starting at the bottom in the following order; purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, pink. Using a bench scraper, smooth all the way around the cake once. If there are any gaps at this point, use the remaining buttercream to fill them in and smooth again with the bench scraper. Repeat until the cake is smooth all the way around. If the buttercream is setting to quickly, place the bench scraper in water for a few seconds and dry off before smoothing the cake, the heat will make the process easier. When the cake is smooth, return it to the fridge. Oh, quick tip, don’t spend too much time sharpening up the top edge, we’re gonna cover it later anyway.

To a large bowl, add 1 egg white and a pinch of salt. Swirl the salt around the bowl and leave for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, add in 100g caster sugar, 40ml of water, 1 tsp vanilla and a splash of lemon juice. Place the bowl over a pan of boiling water and whisk for 7 minutes until stiff peaks form. Things to watch for; make sure the bowl doesn’t touch the boiling water and try to mix in all the sugar, just one rogue crystal can turn the frosting grainy. Leave this to cool completely before transferring to a piping bag.

Time to get our clouds on. Remove the cake from the fridge and pipe clouds around the top. The piping bag will leave behind little peaks in the marshmallow frosting but don’t worry. Using a damp finger, gently press down the peaks until you’re left with little fluffy clouds. Place the cake in the fridge for 10 minutes to let the frosting firm up before placing the Oreo’s on top. Finished! Now grab a fork!