EXTREME CHOCOLATE CAKE

January 28, 2016

A few months ago, we discovered the amazing instagram of Unbirthday Bakery. They make incredible cakes covered in flowers, chocolates and other delightful things. Unfortunately for us they are based on the other side of the world in Sydney, Australia, so we knew that if we wanted one (and we did) we would have to have a go ourselves. It was Imogens 21st birthday back in September so we thought this was the perfect opportunity to give it a go. The cake looked and tasted amazing, and it was a huge hit with our family and friends!

The best thing about these cakes is that you can customise it to you by choosing your favourite chocolates and sweets to decorate it with. We even added edible flowers to ours with the only downside being that they wilted fairly quickly. So you have to be careful with when you choose to put them on. As it was such a success (and we wanted to eat another one) we made another for our dads birthday. This one is pure chocolate indulgence!

A friend of ours asked us to make one of these cakes for a 21st birthday, so we thought this time we'd blog about it and show you the process!

To start you will need a simple sponge recipe (any will do). We made a 10inch vanilla sponge for the bottom tier, with jam and buttercream inside, and a 6inch chocolate sponge, filled with chocolate buttercream, for the top tier.

Next, you need to cover the cake in buttercream. We started with a thin layer to fill in any gaps and to catch all the crumbs. Then, after letting it set for about an hour, we added a second layer, trying to keep it as smooth as possible. Most of the cake ends up covered in ganache or chocolates anyway so it doesn't matter too much if there are some lumps and bumps.

The next step is to make the ganache, which is really simple to make. Take 150ml of double cream and heat it on a low heat until it just starts to steam, then throw in 150g of a mix of dark and milk chocolate and stir until combined. We then left it for around 30 mins to cool and thicken to a good consistency for dripping. Starting with the bottom tier, we poured some ganache onto the middle of the cake and pushed it to the edges until it starts to drip. When you're happy with the look of this you can carefully place the top tier onto the bottom and repeat the dripping process. Don't worry about any ganache pooling at the bottom as you can cover this up with sweets!

Now for the best bit, the decorating! Here we have a selection of our friends favourite sweets and some of the leftover buttercream and ganache for sticking. You can use absolutely anything you desire for this bit, but it works best if you have a mixture of sizes and lengths for example longer chocolate bars and small sweets. We also have some Dr Oetker gold spray and some gold dust which we added to some of the chocolates. Nothing is too much on this cake so you can go as crazy or simple as you like!