I had the honour of making my godson’s birthday cake for his party this morning. I put on my engineering hat and armed with cake, icing and lollies constructed the cake last night and early this morning.
I must credit some of the success of this cake to our new fridge. A few weeks ago we upgraded from a 250L fridge/freezer to a 520L fridge/freezer and I’m over the moon with all the space we have as I could cool the 3 cakes worth of cake and store the completed cake without any issues. So here is the cake in the fridge. You can also just see my ‘baking’ shelf where all my butter, cream cheese etc is stored – I’m so spoilt!
My car, train, plane (well any vehicle) mad godson LOVED the cake. We arrived to find him in tears and completely covered in the bark from the playground that he had just faceplanted into. As soon as he saw the cake the crying stopped replaced by happy squeels of toot toot. He insisted on driving the train on the track. The cake was large enough to cut and serve from the other side of the cake 😉
And the wreckage… complete with fingers through the icing.
The cake is chocolate with chocolate buttercream icing for the main part. The blue and green icing is fluffy frosting from the womens weekly book or more commonly known as italian meringue. It was fresh so still a little soft. The gold rocks are home made honeycomb left over from the honeycomb icecream cake.
On a side note, we all went to the Ipswich railway museum yesterday. It is a wonderful place for kids (toddlers to us bigger ones) and I highly recommend going while the thomas exhibit is on for any Thomas fans. We now have an annual membership so are looking forward to more fun trips filled.
This cake was a big hit at work today. I’m not really suprised as it contains home made icecream and home made honeycomb, chocolate and rice bubbles.
The cake has chocolate crackle base with Ice cream filling containing chocolate and honeycomb chipsAfter cutting and serving, I got the last piece. The poor icecream was really starting to melt by this time.
The Recipe
There are three parts to this recipe, the base, the honeycomb and the icecream. You can make the base and honeycomb before hand if you wish. I made it all in one night so I started with the icecream and while waiting for the first 45min freezing time, got the base then the honeycomb made and even did the washing up!
The base
1 250g block of milk chocolate
A few large scoopfuls of rice bubbles (sorry didn’t count)
1. Line a 20cm spring form cake tin with baking paper
2. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler
3. Add rice bubbles a large serving spoonish at a time. Mix through until you get the consistency of chocolate crackles. You want enough chocolate to set but enough ricebubbles to give a constant crunch.
4. Spread the mixture over the bottom of the cake tin.
The honeycomb
I found this recipe in a forum somewhere but forgot to bookmark. This makes 3 times the amount of honeycomb you will need, but that isn’t a bad thing 😉
Feel free to try any recipe you want. You only need about a handful of honeycomb.
6 tbs white sugar
2 tbs golden syrup
2 tsp water
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1. Prepare a any heat proof flat dish with sides with baking paper over the top
2. Put sugar, golden syrup and water in a small saucepan. Stir over medium heat till the sugar is all disolved.
3. Let it boil for a few minutes
4. BE CAREFUL – take the syrup off the stove and add the bicarb soda and stir it through. It will froth. Pour it quickly onto your baking paper tray and spread it out. It isn’t too bad if your honeycomb doesn’t work out perfectly because you are going to crush it up anyway.
5. Set it aside to cool – it will set at room temp. Don’t try to move it too quickly as it will still be hot in the middle.
The icecream
I used the recipe for Vanilla icecream from David Lebovitz. It is the same recipe I used for my rocky road ice cream and is very very creamy (especially with pure double cream) but also very very yummy. Sure you could just buy icecream, let it go soft and refreeze but you are really missing the delicious taste of the custard and of the icecream.
1. Follow the recipe to make the icecream – be patient with the custard it does take a lot of time and stirring but it will thicken evenly and reward you in the end
2. Take off the heat and quickly set up an icebath.
I do mine with a large mixing bowl containing ice and water and put the cream and eventually the icecream in the medium sized stainless steel bowl
3. Pour cream into the medium mixing bowl. Strain the custard into the cream and then return the vanilla bean into mixture.
4. Using a hand mixer or a whisk, beat the mixture to get some air through it
5. Put in the freezer for 45min
6. Take out of the freezer and beat again. You want to make sure you get all the frozen stuff from the edges as you want the mixture to cool evenly all the way through.
7. Keep doing 5 and 6 until the soft serve stage (the time will depend on your freezer and how quick you are at getting it back into the freezer). In my old fridge it took 6 hours, this time it took 3. Sometime during this stage melt some chocolate and drizzle it over the top. The beater will break it up and spread it through the mixture. Also break the honeycomb up into small chips and spread it through with the beating stage.
8. Once it is at the soft serve stage pour it into the base and store in the freezer overnight.
Take it from the freezer at home to the portable freezer your workmate has carted into work specifically for the cake. I only have a 10min drive to work so a freezer bag did the job for the journey. It didn’t even melt a tiny bit.
The details
David is going to work for IBM on the coast so today was his last day. Anna said her favourite cake was a chocolate krispee icecream cake (She is from England). So after working out that Krispees are ricebubbles the cake plan started. I’ve been looking for a reason to make honeycomb for a while and this just seemed perfect. We don’t have a freezer at work so Ed carted his huge portable in. The cake was devoured during our Friday chocolate biscuit meeting.
We then went and had a 3 course lunch at LAcademie. I had the escargot and the salmon, which was LOVELY and I am still full! You could tell that the serving staff were in training but it was still delightful.
In other good news, I now have left over egg whites. I think Macarons are on the menu this weekend.
My parent’s in law puli passed away today.
He was a loving, loyal and gentle family member and will be sorely missed.
Dear Tosh,
You came into our family as a cautious, scared 4 year old after having a rough life, yet that didn’t stop your ability to love and trust us. We saw you grow from a timid teenager to a calm distinguished old gentleman. Everytime we came to visit, you were the first to welcome us. We will miss having your nose nudge our hand for a scratch, your snuggles when lying down, your watchfullness over all family members, your help in the kitchen, your refereeing of anyone fighting and even your singing.
We will miss having you around as we continue on our journey, however we understand that we were blessed to have you in our lives for so long.
Love you Toshie and you will live on in our memories,
Carly
Cheesecake:
500g of cream cheese
3 eggs (70g each) (2 of mine had double yolks – I think you could extend this to 4 eggs if you wanted)
200g sugar
2 tbsp rum
1 tbsp flour
2 tsp of vanilla extract
1 tbsp grated orange rind (about the rind of 1 orange. You could definately increase this to 2 if you wanted)
Topping: (feel free to halve as it made about double the amount needed – however the topping will work lovely over icecream etc)
2 cups of sugar
1/2 cup of water
2tbsp rum (this is really strong – do not increase)
2tbsp of orange juice (only adds a subtle flavour difference)
200ml of creme
1 1/2 tsp of gelatin (would use 2 – 2 1/2 next time – you could skip the gelatin but the sauce would be runnier)
Instructions:
Base:
1. Crush the biscuits into crumbs
2. Mix with butter
3. Line the bottom of a 24inch spring loaded pan with baking paper. (you could use a 20inch and make a taller cake)
4. line the bottom and edge of the tin with the biscuit and butter mixture.
5. Preheat the oven to 150deg
Cheesecake:
6. In a large bowl cream the cream cheese and sugar together
7. Beat the eggs in one at a time
8. Stir in the vanilla, rum and orange peel
9. Stir in the flour
10. Pour the mixture into the cake tin over the biscuits
11. Bake for 50min – 1 hour (I did 55 but think it could have done with another 5 min – it will depend on your oven)
12. Turn off the oven and leave the oven door open to let the cheesecake cool. Then pull the cake out of the oven and let sit on the bench till really cool. Feel free to refrigerate after this step.
The topping:
13. Caramalise the sugar and water
14. Remove off the stove once caramalised
15. Add cream and stir through – It will bubble/hiss etc
16. Put back on the stove at low heat and stir until the cream is all the way through and nice and smooth
17. Remove off the heat and whip in the rum, orange juice and gelatin (you could disolve the gelatin beforehand but it is hot enough that it just mixes straight in)
18. Let the topping cool
19. Spoon the topping over the cake. (Don’t pour it as it will crater the cheese cake – yes I talk from experience)
20. Put it all in the fridge to cool overnight
I swirled cream once the topping started to set on the cake, be creative in how you want to decorate or just let the caramel topping show itself off.
Enjoy
The story
I’m now catching the train to work and this has proved difficult to bring left over cake into the office (especially if they are layered and tall). I had threatened if I couldn’t find a nice tall cake carrier there may be no more cake and this week work provided me with a nice lovely large carrier. Very cool!
Today was my boss’s birthday and he likes rum cake (actually rum anything 😉 ). Normally we get cheesecake shop cake but our options for cake in the new office are pretty limited so I was asked if I had the time could I make the cake for today. Anna discovered rum and orange was nice at our Christmas party and suggested it as the flavour for the cake.
I searched for a recipe or something even similar but couldn’t find one. So I made it up with a whole range of ideas from different recipes and my growing knowledge of how everything goes together. I’m really happy with how it turned out and it received many praises from my workmates.
