When I was asked to make a chocolate cake with a "Pink Gin Party" theme, I wasn't sure at first how to go about it - I mean the pink part seemed quite easy, but, I have never tried using gin inside a chocolate cake recipe - and wasn't planning on trying it today... so If it wasn't going to go inside, the answer was simple ~
It had to go on top!
I started off baking a basic dark chocolate cake for the inside, this was just a two layer cake, and the basic process was pretty painless.
CHOCOLATE CAKE RECIPE
• 3 CUPS FLOUR
• 2 CUPS SUGAR
• ½ CUP COCOA
• 2 TSP BI CARB
• 1 TSP SALT
SIFT TOGETHER ABOVE DRY INGREDIENTS
MAKE 3 HOLES IN FLOUR MIXTURE
PUT IN
a. 2 TSP VANILLA
b. 2 TSP VINEGAR
c. 1 CUP OIL
POUR 2 CUPS WATER OVER ALL
MIX BATTER WELL
BATTER WILL BE A LITTLE THIN
POUR INTO 2 TINS WELL GREASED OR ONE BIG PAN
BAKE AT 190*C FOR 30 – 40 MINUTES (DO TEST AS SOMETIMES READY SOONER)
To ensure that the cake bakes evenly - I made some home made heat strips that fit around the circumference of the cake pans. This is basically some wet kitchen towel, wrapped in tin foil that I wrap around the cake-pans sides. This helps the cake not mound in the middle so that you have a level surface to the cake layers without having to trim at the cake too much.
Once that was done, I left the cake layers to cool, while I started working on the icing...
The Icing:
For the white exterior of the cake I decided to go with a simple butter cream Icing:
4 cups Powdered Sugar (or 1 pound)
1 cup Butter (Softened)
2 teaspoons Vanilla
2-4 tablespoons Cream
INSTRUCTIONS
Add softened butter and vanilla to the mixing bowl and mix until completely combined.
Add Powdered Sugar and beat on low until it is incorporated. Then move mixer up to medium-high speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When completely mixed the frosting may appear dry.
Add cream a little bit at a time until frosting is the proper consistency.
For this batch I added a tiny amount of pink coloring to the basic icing, just enough to get it off-white. And once the cake was cool, I started frosting the cake, covering it completely with the light pink butter cream icing.
The next step was to make the dripping for the cake, and here I decided to go with a white chocolate ganache which I colored a darker shade of pink using some liquid food coloring.
This I made as follows:
For the chocolate drip I made a very simple white chocolate ganache.
1 cup of white baking chocolate melted into a half a cup of heavy cream.
I let that cool a bit and reach a thicker consistency, colored it to shade before placing it into a squeeze bottle with a nozzle tip.
With the ganache, I went around the cake edges dripping all around the top edge, this was a bit tricky as the white chocolate ganache did not end up as thick as I am used to the normal chocolate ones being.
After the dripping was done, I covered the top of the chocolate cake with the remainder of the chocolate, once that was on - I had to get a way to make the Gin bottle stand on top of the cake. And for this I had to get a bit creative. I didn't want to prop it up with a huge blob of icing which could easily make the cake look ugly, so I decided to take a risk and carve out a piece of the cake that the base of the gin bottle could comfortably sit in, once the bottle was in place I propped the neck up using a bit of icing and some of the candies used for decorating.and then proceeded to decorate with some candy pearls, white speckled eggs and a few chocolates