Earthy Delights

One of the worst things about enjoying cake making as a hobby is that one cannot just make a cake with 30 or so servings inside and then serve it up for dessert (unless one lives in a commune of cake fanatics). It is therefore hard to find opportunities to practise. Some people use styrofoam moulds as bases but this seems a special kind of sacrilege to me; the cake itself is half the challenge surely? 

Late last year, after I had made cakes for both my children within two weeks of each other, I was keen to keep caking so I put the call out on Facebook for any of my friends who wanted a cake made. They would pay for the ingredients and I would make the cake for free. Only one friend took up my offer and she brought me a set of unique challenges. She wanted a Wallace & Gromit cake, it had to be dairy-free, and the cake itself had to be healthy. 

I found it virtually impossible to find out how to make a dairy-free gânache online, or to be more specific, I found it impossible to be sure about whether the dairy-free gânache would be the right consistency for use under fondant. I much prefer gânache to buttercream as a base for fondant, it gives such a wonderfully firm and smooth surface with which to work. And I *love* that a hot knife run over the surface creates a crust of sorts that keeps the cake perfect so matter how much prodding one subjects it to. In the end, I tried out a few recipes and this one gave me the perfect result:

500g 70% cocoa chocolate or dairy-free chocolate (you

can use Lindt but Ikea makes a far cheaper version if you

can get your hands on it)

1 cup coconut cream

1. Grate the chocolate or blitz in a food processor and

place in a bowl (if you do not have a processor, simply 

chop as finely as possible).

2. Heat cream in a saucepan until just before boiling, 

watch until bubbles begin to appear and take off the heat.

3. Add cream to chocolate, let it sit for a few moments and

then fold gently through. 

The end result should be thick and glossy.

Leave for 24 hours and stir well to restore spreadable 

texture (sometimes it requires a 15 sec burst in the microwave).

The cake requested also had to be dairy free, processed-sugar free, and healthy. The chocolate beetroot cake from Jude Blereau’s “Wholefood” cookbook was the perfect choice. It is a very dense, rich cake but at least one can imagine that one is getting a serve of veggies in each slice...

3 medium beetroot

375g (3 cups) unbleached spelt flour

125g (1 cup) cocoa powder

3 teaspoons baking powder 

440g (2 cups) Rapadura (dried sugar cane) or raw sugar

375 ml (1 ½ cups) almond oil

125ml soy or rice milk

1 ½ tablespoons natural vanilla extract 

3 eggs (or egg replacer)

Wash the unpeeled beetroots, then steam or boil for 30 mins, or until tender.

Leave to cool, then remove the skins and puree in a food processor. You should have about 420ml/2cups of beetroot puree.

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius (340 degrees Farenheit) . Lightly crease a 24cm (9 ½ inch) spring from cake tin and line the base and sides with baking paper.

Sift the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder into a bowl. Add the sugar and whisk gently to combine. In a separate bowl, blend the oil, milk, beetroot puree, vanilla and egg and mix together until smooth. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir gently until combined. Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake for 1 hour 30mins- 1 hour 50mins, or until the centre is cooked and a skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool for 10 mins, and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool. 

If you are making this for a spherical cake as I was you should know that in an 8 inch diameter tin, you will need two lots of this mix for a whole cake (or you will end up with a much smaller rocket than expected!). 

The birthday boy is obsessed with Wallace & Gromit and initially we were going to make a nice and simple cake of Gromit in his kennel. Then the party became a space party (because he is also obsessed with space ships, rockets and all manner of intergalactic space transport). The only option was to have a cake based on "A Grand Day Out" and it just so happened that I had one of Debbie Brown's amazing books on hand to instruct me in the ways of rockets and men.

Unfortunately, I did not know that I would need double the mix for my cake so when I assembled the two, sadly-smaller-than-required halves, it looked like this: 

 It is supported with four rods and a cake

board.
You do not want to ask how much gânache

it took to make it look like this...

 

...the world's biggest Malteaser.

 And then a giant tee pee of fondant to 

make the rocket pointed. 

 The end result (Wallace's arm needed to be propped

given the humidity).

 There were more than 150 rivets on that

 space ship, each individually cut and applied

with tweasers. I did not have the right size 

piping tip so I used an old pen which I

boiled first.

 The side with the door...

 Detail on Wallace (I love that he has a bit of cheese

on his lip). The piece of cheese in his hand had holes

in it as well.

For some reason, Gromit was far harder to model
 than Wallace. 

Both of them were secured in place using pieces of
spaghetti.

The full details on how to model Wallace & Gromit and
the rest of the scene can be found in Debbie Brown's
Cracking Celebration Cakes.

I loved doing this cake and by all reports it was a grand

success!
For an account of the party, and much better photos visit
this blog...
http://spytheharriet.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/3-2-1blast-off-ted-turns-four.html