OMG at last I have managed to sit down and write a post on my blog. The last 18 days have been absolutely packed with loads of baking, orders, quoyes, book-keeping, website changes, image resizing and general upkeep of my blog and business. In between all of that, I have children to keep on track, a house to keep in order and downtime for myself.
My most important bake of the last three weeks has been a Birthday Cake for my mother. I wanted to try something different for her that I had never tried before so I went for it big style and made a Chocolate Orange Chequerboard Cake complete with a chocolate ganache “drip effect”.
For the sponge I made 4 sponge layers, 2 orange flavoured and coloured and 2 chocolate layers. I made a orange buttercream which was flavoured and coloured orange too. I used the buttercream to sandwich the layers together but to create the chequerboard effect I had to cut the sponges into circles. Each sponge layer was cut into 3 circles. From these circles the layers were created by placing the 3 circles back together but in alternating colours.
As each layer was created I spread some buttercream over the layer before placing the next layer on top but alternating the colours again. This method was continued until all 4 layers of sponge were reformed.
To decorate the cake I made some water chocolate ganache to the desired consistency for just dripping down the edges of the cake. It worked really well and created a lovely. shiny layer of delicious chocolate which I adorned with pieces of Terry’s Chocolate Orange.
All I can say is that my family loved it. My mother really enjoyed it even took a big chunk home with her, I was so excited to cut the cake open and reveal the inside as I had not told anyone about what I had created.
There are so many options with this type of cake which reminds me a little of a Battenburg Cake – I haven’t baked one of these for ages. You could make it Strawberry and Chocolate, Lemon and Dark Chocolate, Funfetti and Chocolate – the list is endless 🙂
Well I have so much to tell you about other things I have been doing but I will share some more tomorrow as I need to go and carry on with other jobs on my list.