Guest Baker - Surprise Rainbow Cake

My sister made this wonderful cake for her friend at work and I just had to share it as a guest post. 

I know rainbow cakes have become quite popular, particularly after the Great British Bake Off did their episode on surprise cakes and there are tons of recipes for them on the Internet, however I still thought I'd share this. I first came across a rainbow cake at a meeting of the Clandestine Cake Club at Ms Marmite Lovers in London. MsMarmite had brought it along as her creation. They tend to look unassuming from the outside - plain white buttercream, which I guess makes the novelty of the rainbow of colours inside even more appealing. 

I've never made one as I'm not keen on using lots of food colouring, but I have to say the final result looks amazing! 

I don't have any photos of the step by step but my sister used this Mary Berry recipe for the cake and this recipe without the addition of white chocolate for the buttercream. The buttercream and piped on the outside in a rose pattern like in this and this cake. 

I have seen varying degrees of success with rainbow cakes on the internet so i asked her to share her tips with me and they are as follows: 

- make at least a 6oz mixture for EACH layer 

- use good quality gel or powder food colouring. I prefer gel. 

- unfortunately natural food colourings are probably a no go as they don't tend to be as deep in colour.

- add the food colouring a very small amount at a time, mixing well between additions to make sure you don't overdo the colours. My mum says 'you can always add more but you can't take it out'

- once the cakes are baked use a cake leveller to remove the top of each cake and ensure they are the same height (make sure you don't move the wire on the cake cutter between cutting each cake!

- put quite thick layers of butter cream between each layer to ensure there are clear divisions. 

- decorate the cake quite plainly. 

- use a better knife than this to cut it if you want really clean layers! She was at work and hence didnt have a great knife. 

Enjoy! 

Macaroons

From my Mum's birthday cake there were some extra macaroons so I sandwiched them with a chocolate ganache. Half with slivers of crystallised ginger and half with little chunks of marzipan.

As mentioned in my previous post these were from a recipe from @hollybellmummy, which was the most detailed recipe. I would certainly recommend giving it a go!

Chocolate and ginger macaroons






Chocolate and marzipan macaroon

A Special Birthday

As mentioned in my previous post Christmas Eve is my mum's birthday and this year was a special birthday. I've been planning what cake to make for ages. I wanted something a bit special, but not a 'celebration cake' as such as she's not keen on icing. I also wanted something that would double as pudding. I was watching Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets back in the summer and found just the thing! A chocolate delice with a chocolate macaroon base. I tried making the macaroon recipe in Raymond Blancs book a few months ago and whilst it was delicious they weren't a total success. The shells weren't perfect and shiny and they stuck to the baking paper a bit. Macaroons have always been my nemesis, they are so temperamental!

As a result I was a little worried about attempting them for this. I even bought some digestive biscuits for a back up biscuit base instead. I'm pleased to say though that the digestives are still sat in the cupboard in their packet, thanks to the fabulous instructions from Holly Bell.

I started by making some chocolate macaroons following Holly Bell's recipe. For this I only made the macaroons, not the filling, but I might make some filling to use up the left over macaroons.

As well as following her advice and making a template from a milk bottle top for standard sized macaroons I also drew around the base of a 8" round cake tin to make a giant macaroon to act as the base for the delice.

Her recipe only has 6g cocoa in so they turned out to be very pale chocolate macaroons but very delicious all the same! She says to use 144g aged egg whites. For me this was about 4 eggs.

In my oven I found they needed a little longer and would also recommend using magic liner instead of greaseproof paper as they came off much better. Other than those small tweaks the recipe was spot on and I'd suggest maybe even foolproof as long as the fool was reading the instructions carefully!

While the macaroons were cooling I set about making the delice. This is basically a chocolate custard. You start by heating the milk and cream and then pour over beaten egg and add chocolate. Very simple! I also added a small amount of salt to help bring out the flavour of the chocolate. I used this recipe but only made the delice not the base, nuts or foam.

Once the macaroon had cooled I placed it inside a greased 8" round, sprung form cake tin ensuring it was a tight fit and then poured the delice mixture over the top and put in the fridge to set.

Once the delice was set I dusted the top liberally with cocoa and then piled up the macaroons, finishing with a little shake of cocoa and edible glitter.

I then made a quick salted caramel sauce by melting sugar with a little water in a pan until it has formed a syrup and turned a deep golden colour. Keep your eye on it as it will turn and burn very quickly. Take it off the heat and add a good slug of double cream. Be careful as it will bubble up. Add salt to taste.

I served the delice with pouring cream and the salted caramel sauce. It was very rich but absolutely delicious and so very smooth and chocolately.