As promised here is the recipe for the Coke Layers cake I made for Luca’s 10th Birthday, from the Outsider Tart’s fantastic book ‘Baked in America’.

This is not the first recipe I have baked from this book, I have made their gorgeous Sugar Saucers, which are wonderful cookies the size of a side plate and I made my Son Olly the Blackout Cake a couple of weeks a go for his 16th Birthday. What I love about this book is that it really puts me out of my usual baking comfort zone, I get to bake with the biggest mix of ingredients, in the most unusual way. When you take a usual sponge mix of eggs, butter, sugar & flour, throw that simple set of ingredients completely into disarray by adding coke, marshmallows, buttermilk, so on and so on, you do wonder how on earth this will ever turn into an edible cake.

Trust… thats what you need, trust that the two Davids know what they are talking about, trust that the huge list of ingredients is required and trust in the simple and straight forward instructions and you will have a wonderful cake.

As with the Blackout Cake and the Sugar Saucers, everyone loved it. I took some into work for everyone to try, well that was the plan, one of my colleagues liked it so much that he had 3 slices!!! Everyone complimented me on what a wonderful cake it was and I was really chuffed with how it turned out, more importantly, Luca loved it.  It is described in the book as the perfect cake to impress a crowd of real chocoholics, it ticks all the boxes, a rich deep sweet chocolate flavour with just enough bitterness to please purists!

Happy Birthday Luca & buon appetito

Link for the cakes frosting:
http://dianastaveley.blogspot.com/2011/10/chocolate-sour-cream-fudge-frosting.html

 

 

 

 

 

340g unsalted butter
350ml Coke (you can use caffeine-free, but not diet)
65g mini marshmallows
85g unsweetened chocolate, chopped (unsweetened translates as 100% cocoa, as this was for Luca I used 85% as it is a little sweeter)
530g plain flour
115g cocoa powder
2 1/4 teaspoons of baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
3/4 of a teaspoon of salt
675g granulated sugar
80ml of flavourless oil, I used sunflower
1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
5 large eggs at room temperature
300ml buttermilk, also at room temperature

Preheat the oven to 180c/350f/gas mark 4. Butter three 9 inch round cake pans, line the bottoms with baking parchment, dust with flour and tap out any excess. I got to use my new wonderful George Wilkinson tin.

In a medium saucepan, place the butter and Coke over a medium heat until the butter melts. Add the marshmallows and chopped chocolate and stir continuously until the chocolate and marshmallows have melted – this takes longer than you’d think, but constant stirring will help speed things up. Let the mixture cool for about 10 minutes.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt, set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fixed with the paddle attachement, thoroughly combine the sugar, oil and vanilla on medium speed. Reduce the speed to low and add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the cooled chocolate mixture and stir until evenly incorporated. The mixture should have a consistent colour. Alternately add the flour and buttermilk in 3 or 4 additions, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients and mixing only until just combined. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared pans.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center of each cake comes out clean. It is best to rotate the pans front to back, top to bottom about 2/3 of the way through.

The link below is for the yummy Sugar Saucers:

http://dianastaveley.blogspot.com/2011/08/finding-good-cookie-recipe-is-not-easy.html