Layers of rich chocolate cake with a chocolate buttercream, chocolate drip and melt-in-the-mouth truffles.
My ultimate favourite dessert! To me there is nothing better than a rich chocolate cake (that also happens to look amazing too).
I absolutely love making cakes like this and being able to decorate them and make them look pretty. The process of taking a cake from simple sponges and buttercream to a nicely decorated cake is everything I love. Also, these cakes are usually made for someone’s birthday, so there’s that added bit of extra pressure for it to look nice.
This was my first successful attempt at doing a drip on a cake. I did a trial of this cake before for practice and the drip turned out quite shockingly. The drip set far too quickly so didn’t have the smooth finish a drip is supposed to have. See what my first attempt looked like:
Either way that cake ended up tasting fine and practicing that drip prepared me for how to do it for the real cake, which I think went really well (and was topped nicely with some Monty Bojangles truffles which are just so delicious).
It’s no surprise that baking and decorating a cake is no easy or quick project. It can take hours, if not all day, to complete it, especially when you have to consider sponge cooling times and crumb coat time. If you don’t have all day to dedicate to baking, there is a way you can split the project up over a couple days. Baking your sponges in advance is perfectly fine to do a day or two before decorating. Once the sponges have fully cooled down, they need to be wrapped fully in cling film with no chances of there being any gaps in the cling film. This will keep the sponges moist, as any gaps will let air get in and dry them out. Once all layers are wrapped separately, leave them out on the counter until you are ready to decorate. You can also freeze them to use at a later date if you are not going to be making the cake within the next couple days.
This cake was my first bake into the world of cake decorating and wow was it a journey. The highs and lows of the process is just crazy but, in the end, when you see the cake finished it’s all worth it. After this cake I jumped onto the hype of cake decorating and couldn’t wait to make another one!
Difficulty rating: 7/10