A day later than planned but I said I would write about the Chocolate Sweetie Ring Cake recipe, so here goes. This cake was all my youngest child’s idea as all he wanted to do was make a cake with me – so how could I refuse. I let him choose the tin to bake the cake in so the Pyrex ring mould it was (my favourite too). I knew he would want a chocolate cake so while he changed out of his school uniform and washed his hands I weighed out the ingredients into the mixing bowl which I use with the standing mixer.
I have added some examples of what I have used in making this cake for you to get some ideas about what is suitable for this cake recipe. My standing mixer is black rather than red but I do like the red mixer – red is my favourite colour. My ring mould is made of glass and is a Pyrex dish which I was given as a present from a close friend. I love using it to make different bakes in. Once I made a Summer Fruit Pudding in it which was very different and much appreciated – everyone complimented on it. I will have to find a photo of it to share with you. I could not find a glass dish on Amazon to share with you so this style of glass dish must be very rare now but I bet many people have them sitting in their kitchen cupboards gathering dust. 🙁
Back to the making of this cake, when my son reappeared we set to work with mixing the cake. Although not much work was needed as the mixer did the hard work. I lifted him up on the counter top (staying behind him to keep him safe) and pointed to the button which he needed to operate to work the mixer. Whilst the mixer worked its magic we both watched and I explained that we don’t put our fingers in as we didn’t want cake with added roughage. Hahaha! Once the cake batter was smooth and lump free we transferred it to the glass ring mould which we had lightly greased with a the spray oil and a pastry brush. Gone are the days of the piece of flour wrapper and a dab of soft spread like my mother used to do. 🙂
After 25 minutes, the cake was well risen and cooked through ( I just touched the surface and as it sprung back and didn’t leave an indentation I knew it was baked) so I removed it from the oven to cool slightly before removing it from the mould. To help with removing the cake from the mould I used a large palette knife, as it is bendy and shapes to the contours in the dish, and I ran it around the outside edge of the mould to loosen the outer edge. Next, I turned the dish over onto a serving plate and left the dish there for the cake to fall with the help of gravity away from the dish cleanly. This took a matter of seconds after which I removed the glass dish and left the cake sponge to cool whilst I made the topping.
For the topping, I melted the milk chocolate in a glass mixing bowl, another Pyrex dish, over a pan of boiling water. Once the chocolate was melted I added the icing sugar to it just to thicken it slightly. This topping was ready to add to the cake – this is when the fun starts. At this point, my daughter heard my son and myself talking about what sweets we were going to add to the top of the cake and she came in to the kitchen to investigate. Now I had two children to keep happy but “two heads are better than one” and I knew they would do a good job between them so I left them to it. Whilst I did the washing up they designed and decorated the cake – they did a really great job and the cake is a bit of a showstopper made by two little budding bakers. 🙂
There are various ingredients which can be changed to suit different dietary requirements such as making the cake gluten free by using gluten free flour ( I buy from Tesco) but you must remember to mix the flours as you can’t rely on just one type of flour to make a gluten free bake. This is something I have noticed when I have tried different recipes recently. You could try to use egg replacer ( I buy from Holland & Barrett) in this recipe but you would need to add more liquid so I would use plain yoghurt or milk to help the cake retain moisture as well as xanthan gum to aid the rising of the cake. Again, I am talking from my experience of what recipes I have tried out recently in my own kitchen. A lot of gluten free and egg free baking is just trial and error but thankfully my family eat the trials and errors so nothing goes to waste. I have added the links to the products in the shops I buy from and what is available from Amazon too.
There are many flavour combinations which you could try with this recipe, as it doesn’t just have to be chocolate. If you don’t like chocolate you could make it vanilla, lemon, orange, coffee, caramel or be totally flamboyant and make a cola flavoured cake. The list is endless and you could make the topping to compliment the cake flavour. I just made something that was quick and easy but you can be as extravagant as you like, for example, add a walnut and caramel topping with the coffee sponge. MMmmmMMmmm now I am hungry and it isn’t even lunch time yet. With the lemon sponge you could include poppy seeds in the recipe to make it healthier with a swirl of lemon curd and top it off with crushed meringue in a lemon scented fresh cream topping. Delicious and a great idea – I must work out the nutritional information for this one.
I imagine that nutritionally this cake will be high in calories, fat, sugars, carbohydrates and so on but isn’t that usually the case with cake unless you are trying to make it healthy and believe me this was not a healthy cake. However, one piece of a cake like this is not a bad thing – “everything in moderation” so they say. Well I better sign off for now and I hope I have given you some food for thought today. I need to start some other jobs today and then get back to my writing.