OSCAR STYLE
WoW what a show stopper of a cake, as usual I like to go big! This recipe came from one of my Birthday presents and what a gorgeous first cake to bake for my friends and family, there is going to be NO dieting around me this year 😆
Allow yourself a couple of chilled me time hours
3 x 20 cm sandwich cake tins lined
Ingredients
(Serves 8-10)
The Cake
400g plain flour
640g caster sugar
180g 75% cocoa powder
1 tsp bicarbonate soda
1.5 tsp baking powder
1.5 tsp sea salt
4 lrg eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
120 ml vegetable oil
410 ml buttermilk
250 ml water
Shaved chocolate to decorate
Salted Caramel
290g caster sugar
35g golden syrup
20 ml water
160 ml double cream
1 tsp sea salt
80g unsalted butter room temp
Chocolate Frosting
I00g icing sugar
200g cocoa powder
320g unsalted butter room temp
150 ml whole milk
First make the salted caramel, this was super exciting as I have never made this before and it acts up like a bubbling volcano, really exciting. Follow the method to the letter otherwise you can end up with a lumpy separated sauce. In a pan put the sugar, golden syrup and water, do not stir at all on a medium heat let all the ingredients melt together, when there has been a slight colour change to a light brown, take off the heat and slowly pour in the cream whisking all the time until smooth. Then put the caramel back on the heat for a couple of minutes and boil until 115 C, remove from the heat immediately add the salt and transfer to a bowl, pop in the fridge to cool and set.
Now to make the cake batter, pre heat your oven to 175 C, in a large bowl place the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, bicarbonate soda, baking powder and salt, beat to a smooth mix, in a large jug whisk the eggs, vanilla, oil, buttermilk and water. Slowly pour this to the dry ingredients whisking in until just combined then beat the mixture for one minute. Pour equally in to your three tins, pop in the oven and bake for around 30 minutes until light and springy. Turn out on to a wire cooling rack and leave to cool.
While the cake is cooling make the chocolate icing, this sometime just goes wrong for me and separates, but today it did not Ya! In a large bowl place the icing sugar, cocoa powder and butter, whisk until sandy in texture, slowly add the milk then keep whisking for about five minutes until light and fluffy.
Now to layer the cakes, you can cut the cakes in half for a more dramatic layered look like I did or just stack them, place the first layer on your cake stand and spread a third or sixth of the caramel depending on how many layers, repeat, I also like to spread some chocolate fudge over the layers too! Once all layers loaded cover the whole cake in the chocolate fudge icing and finish off with shavings of chocolate and enjoy.
