To celebrate my son Harry’s 14th birthday I made this cookies and cream chocolate cake for him to enjoy with his friends – and of course gave it a Fairtrade twist! It was pronounced “the nicest cake ever” – high praise indeed – so I thought I would share it with you all!
The recipe is originally from BBC Good Food and is four tiers high, I have adapted the recipe to make it only three, which in my opinion was quite big enough! The icing if for the original size cake, and I did have a bit of icing left at the end, which I’ve frozen for another day. (If you did want to make four tiers you can find the original recipe here)
Ingredients:
225ml vegetable oil
300g plain flour
100g Fairtrade cocoa powder
3tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp bicarb of soda
420g Fairtrade light brown sugar
300ml buttermilk (I used normal semi-skimmed milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice added)
150ml strong Fairtrade coffee
3 tsp Fairtrade vanilla extract
3 large free-range eggs
For the icing:
250g slightly salted butter
600g icing sugar
280g full fat cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla extract
10 filled chocolate biscuits (I used bourbons)
Method:
- Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4.
- Grease and line three 20cm round cake tins with baking parchment
- Put flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, light brown soft sugar and 1 tsp salt in a bowl and mix well. If there are any lumps in the sugar, squeeze these through your fingers to break them up.
- Measure our the buttermilk, coffee, oil and vanilla in a jug. Add the eggs and whisk until smooth.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and whisk until well combined. Pour the cake mixture evenly into the two tins, and bake for 25-30 mins until risen and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
- Cool in the tins for 10 mins, then turn out onto a wire rack, peel off the baking parchment and leave to cool.
To make the icing:
- Put the butter in a large bowl and mix with a hand or stand mixer to soften.
- Add half the icing sugar and mix until smooth.
- Add the cream cheese and sieve in the remaining icing sugar and blend once more with the mixer (I left mine mixing for about 5 minutes to make it really smooth).
- Put the biscuits in a food processor and whizz to fine crumbs or put in a plastic bag and bash with a rolling pin (this is what I did!).
- Add the biscuit crumbs to the icing and mix again until combined.
To assemble:
To assemble the cake, stick one of your sponges to a cake stand or board with a little of the cream cheese icing. Use roughly half the icing to stack the remaining cakes on top, spreading a generous amount between each layer. Pile the remaining icing on top of the assembled cake, and use a palette knife to ease it over the edges, covering the entire surface of the cake. Tidy the plate with a piece of kitchen paper.
