Thursday 1 October 2015

Gravity Defying Cake

Today was Small's 12th birthday and I decided I was making him an M&M Gravity Defying cake.

It's actually a lot easier than it looks.

First I made my chocolate cake mixture (all recipes on request, I've probably already put it on here ages ago), which made two sandwich cakes plus seven cup cakes (not sure why it didn't make six or eight!!). This recipe uses egg yolks mixed in and egg whites folded in after (makes it much lighter).

Sandwiched together with chocolate butter icing (I use melted chocolate instead of coca powder as it makes it more fudgey and it sets better).

I decided on M&M's because of their colour which looks fabulous on a chocolate cake. On a white cake I think maltesers or aero bubbles would look extra good.

I covered the sides and top with more butter icing and inserted a skewer into the cake towards one side. I made a small diagonal cut in a packet of M&M's and puffed it up (after emptying it) and secured it on the top of the skewer using a bit of melted chocolate. Using a few M&M's at a time and being very patient, I stuck the sweets onto the skewer starting at the base near the cake. It takes a lot of time and I found using chocolate that had cooled slightly stuck the sweets better, otherwise they just slide down the skewer.

Grandma was my assistant chef today and she used a bowl covered with a tea towel and then gently threw M&M's at the bowl to see how they fell (just to help construct the falling sweets).

The sides of the cake were covered with Kit Kat bars all the way round.

The M&M's were stuck to the skewer using melted chocolate all the way up and when completely set (and after walking away and coming back) more added to give it a bit more bulk. Sticking them out at odd angles looked better than just sticking on flat.

Making them look as if they were spilling out over the top of the cake and partly down the sides. We had a lot of fun playing really and it's really hard to stop.

I piped white chocolate for his name onto pachment paper and peeled it off when cool and stuck it to the kit kats. It wasn't perfect but it worked.

The look on the boys faces when they saw the finished cake was priceless - HOW DID YOU DO THAT? Thay asked.

Because I bought special candles (and because I didn't want to set the sweet packet on fire) I added them to the cup cakes instead of the main cake.

It tasted good but it's very difficult to fit in a box or cake tin. This cake was a success.