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00:00 Hi everyone and welcome back to my kitchen. Today we are doing a very special recipe post
00:04 over from my friends at Laura Ashley in honour of the Great British Bake Off being back on
00:07 our TV screens. I absolutely love the Bake Off. I have a really rubbish attention span
00:11 and I can't sit through most TV programmes but the Bake Off I can watch. If you live
00:15 overseas you might not actually know this but if you are British and you don't love
00:19 watching the Great British Bake Off you can actually have your passport revoked so it's
00:22 very important to take this programme seriously. So we're going to be doing a chocolate and
00:25 raspberry showstopper cake which is going to be perfect if you want to make a big impression
00:28 at a dinner party or a tea party or something like that but it's a genuine recipe so it's
00:32 going to be really straightforward. So the first thing we want to do is make our chocolate
00:35 sponge with our handy mixer here. Make sure you've preheated your oven and mine's at 160
00:39 because it's a fan oven but if yours isn't I'd say about 180 and then it's a one stage
00:44 mixer so everything just literally gets chucked in a bowl. So the first thing that you'll
00:48 want to do is get your sugar in there so I've got mine here in this jug so just pour that
00:52 in. Great. And then when you're adding your flour it's going to be 6 ounces of self-raising
01:00 flour but because it's going to be a chocolate sponge you're going to want to hold back 3
01:04 tablespoons of the flour and put in 3 tablespoons of cocoa instead so if you just - oops, I
01:09 dropped my spoon out there - if you just knock that all in as well and then hold back about
01:16 3 tablespoons and then with your cocoa powder you're going to pop that in. So basically
01:21 for however many eggs you are adding that's how much cocoa you would substitute and this
01:25 is a 3 egg recipe so it's going to be 3 tablespoons that go in. 1, 2, 3. Perfect. And then the
01:38 next thing to go in is going to be your eggs so as I said you should have 3. Crack them
01:45 in the bowl there. Try and avoid any shell disasters. 1, 2, oops, yep just avoided a
01:56 shell disaster there. And 3 going in. Lovely. Okay. You're also going to want 6 ounces of
02:09 margarine. I've used stork because it's recommended very highly by the lovely Mary Berry so I'm
02:14 just going to pop that all in. Great. And finally you're going to want a teaspoon of
02:22 baking powder. This just gives it a little bit of an extra lift. Obviously you are using
02:25 self-raising flour so you don't need tons and tons of this but 1 little teaspoon in
02:30 you go. And now literally all you have to do is put your mixer on and wait for everything
02:35 to combine. Okay so when that's fully combined you should be ready to take your - oops - mixer
02:40 handle out. There we go. I think this thing might be older than me, it's quite creaky
02:44 now. And that's the consistency you're looking for. It should be sort of just dropping away
02:48 there, very lightweight, nice and airy but no little white bumps which would mean that
02:52 the flour or the sugar or something hasn't quite combined yet. Just give it a little
02:56 bit of a stir with a spatula. And then you're going to need 2 cake tins about this size.
03:01 This is an 8 inch cake tin. If you were going to want to adjust the quantities at all you
03:05 would have to sort of think about the cake tin size that you're using. This is like a
03:08 pretty standard cake tin I'd say. And you want to grease them first with a little bit
03:12 of margarine or maybe a cake release, anything you've got really. And then half of the mixture
03:16 is going to go into one and then half into the other one. So let's just take my bowl
03:21 away from my mixer here. Okay so there should be half going into this one here. So it's
03:26 good if you can use a spatula with quite a flat straight edge on it because it just helps
03:29 you to divvy up the mixture a little bit more evenly. So half into cake tin number 1. I'll
03:36 bring over my second cake tin. And that's going to be half going in there. Perfect.
03:45 And then don't waste anything. So just keep scraping until all the mixture is out of the
03:49 bowl and ready to go into the oven. Now once the mix is in the cake tins the next thing
03:54 you're going to do is just smooth it over so that you get a nice even bake. So let's
03:58 put the spoon down there. And just using the back of a spatula, you can use a palette knife
04:02 or something like that if you want. Just work in little circular motions until everything
04:07 is covered. You'll be surprised by just how much the cake is going to rise. It looks very
04:10 thin when it goes in but it does puff up really nicely. That's one. And two. And sort of massage
04:18 it down with a spatula. There we go. It smells really, really inviting actually. It smells
04:25 good. Okay. There we go. And now these are ready to be popped straight into the oven.
04:32 Okay. So your cakes will be ready after about 15 or 20 minutes. The best way to check if
04:35 they're done is to sort of lightly press them and if they spring back up, then that means
04:39 everything's cooked through but they're still going to be nice and moist and perfect for
04:42 eating. So if you just move these out of the way, the best thing you can do while you're
04:46 waiting for your cakes to cool is get started with the icing which is going to go a little
04:49 bit on the top and then quite a lot around the sides. It's very similar to a buttercream
04:53 but it uses a bit more chocolate and less butter so it's more of a frosting I'd say.
04:58 I've got four ounces of dark chocolate here and one ounce of butter and then ten ounces
05:02 of icing sugar which is that really floury, unpredictable stuff. You need to melt your
05:06 chocolate and your butter together before you can get working with them. I like to do
05:10 mine in the microwave which I know is a little bit controversial. Bain-Marie's have never
05:13 quite worked for me. So if you are going to do it in the microwave, the thing I would
05:16 say is make sure you're checking it after a sort of 20 second burst. Don't leave it
05:20 in there for too long because you don't want it to go completely liquid. Okay. So once
05:24 you've got your chocolate and your butter all nicely melted, it's a case of popping
05:27 it on top of your icing sugar. You want to just scrape out so you don't waste anything.
05:32 Bring that all in. Lovely. There we go. And then it's five tablespoons of milk just to
05:43 give it a little bit more movement as you want to be quite fluid so that you can get
05:47 things stuck to it. So I'm just going to pop that in. One, two, three, making a mess here,
06:02 four, there we go, five. And then you want to mix this with a hand mixer I'm going to
06:08 use. You could use like a standing mixer like I did for the cake batter. Obviously, being
06:13 icing sugar, there's going to be a lot of stuff flying off in your face so just be aware
06:16 of that. Great. So once that's all combined, now I get to the really fun part, the assembly.
06:20 So I've got my bottom layer of cake here and you're going to pop on some nice raspberry
06:24 jam. You could use cherries, strawberry, any kind of red jam. I'm going to go with raspberry
06:28 too much, that's going to go on top. And then you're going to want to spoon that out and
06:32 give it a little bit of a stir so it's not too runny. I've got about half a jar here,
06:37 that should be plenty. And then it goes straight into your cake and then you're going to spread
06:44 it out just like you would do with a Victoria sponge. Let's just get that smooth over. So
06:50 here's my cream. You could use like whipped cream from a can personally, I've never really
06:54 liked the taste of it. It just comes down to personal preference. And you're going to
06:58 want to smooth that on top of your jam. Nice thick layer to really give the cake a bit
07:06 of height. I mean, obviously the raspberries on top will give it a bit of a boost as well,
07:11 but you want it to be nice and thick. So keep working with that. Okay, so when you've got
07:14 a really nice level coating of your whipped cream, it's time to put on the top layer.
07:18 This is getting exciting because it's starting to take shape now. Very carefully. And there
07:23 we go. Pat that down into place. And now basically what we're going to do is we're going to cover
07:29 the sides and the top of the cake with the frosting. You're going to put more on the
07:32 sides because you're going to need the kind of stickiness there and a little bit less
07:36 on the top. So it's literally a case of spooning your first bit of frosting on. All the frosting
07:45 has to do on the top is be an adhesive for the raspberries and they will kind of hold
07:50 a little bit themselves because if you cook the cake correctly, it should be nice and
07:53 springy. And just work that on. I've used dark chocolate just so it wasn't so sweet,
07:59 but it's up to you. If you prefer milk, you can use white chocolate. White chocolate will
08:03 give it a really nice colour contrast actually. So just do a little circle on the top like
08:08 that. And then it's a case of working on the sides. Already the jam and the cream are going
08:12 to spill out. It's going to be messy. It's got to work with it really.
08:14 Okay, once you've got a really nice even covering like this, it's time to get sticking with
08:18 your chocolate fingers. I've got two packets here. I doubt I'm going to need both of them
08:22 because they're rather safe and sorry. And it's probably best to stick flat side to your
08:27 cake. There we go. Frosting would be a really good adhesive. And then just work your way
08:32 around the cake. It should look something like that when you're done. Tell a lie because
08:36 I did actually use both packets. I didn't think I was going to. I think they're putting
08:38 fewer and fewer biscuits in each packet these days. So finishing touch is going to be that
08:43 you want to pop some raspberries on top. You can use frozen raspberries. I've never gotten
08:48 particularly well with the frozen ones. I always think that they sort of disintegrate
08:51 a bit when you defrost them. So you're going to just want to pop some raspberries on there.
08:55 I'd say the bottom layer of raspberries do actually try and wedge into the icing a little
09:00 bit if you can just to give them a bit of grip. But then the ones on top of that you
09:03 can literally just scatter. Just keep working that. You do want them to be nice and sort
09:08 of piled up high so you can make them as tall as possible. Okay, so once you've got them
09:14 all piled up in a nice tower, I'm going to add a little bit of ribbon just to sort of
09:17 keep everything together and as a nice little finishing touch, I'm going to go for a red
09:21 ribbon to match my raspberries. The key here is going to be going very, very gently. You
09:26 don't want to disturb any of the chocolate fingers. And there we go, one chocolate and
09:30 raspberry showstopper cake. I hope you had fun watching this and if you do give it a
09:34 whirl, then please do send us some photos because we'd love to see what you come up