A Wee Bit of Cake: July 2013

July - a catchup!

By A Wee Bit of Cake - July 31, 2013

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At the end of June I was back home for a visit for my baby brother’s birthday. I say baby brother but he's 23 and that boy towers over me, somehow all my brothers are 6ft or more while I’m only 5”4 – something went wrong there when they were dishing out the height genees!

Anyway – cake! So baby brother asked me to make him a birthday cake and requested cookies and cream flavour. I had never made cookies and cream before but I like a challenge and it’s another cake to add to my list. It actually turned out to be really easy to make and I did make most of it up as I went along. I used my trusty chocolate sponge recipe and used vanilla buttercream with crushed Oreo Cookies added to it. It got me thinking that there must be a whole host of biscuits or cookies that could be blended with buttercream to make some fab cake fillings.

Now I know I use this chocolate cake recipe all the time but it’s so reliable and I often find that I like a plain sponge but an interesting filling as they can complement each other quite well. Sometimes it can be flavour overload if the sponge has as strong or stronger flavour than the filling. I know this recipe is in cups and I should really work out the weight but if you invest in some baking cups it becomes such a quick cake to make.

Instead of sending you back to a page with the chocolate cake recipe I decided to be less lazy and actually post it again. Now once again I have done my usual trick of forgetting to photograph the stages (one day I will learn to remember my camera!) but this cake is so easy that I am confident you will be able to re-create it (if you wish!) by following these instructions. When I was at uni my lecturer used to tell me to describe something so my granny would understand so I like my instructions to be nice and clear so even the most novice bakers feel they can try my recipes.

Cookies and Cream Cake:

2.5 cups of self-raising flour

2 cups caster sugar
1 cup of cocoa
1 cup of sunflower or vegetable oil
1.5 cups of milk
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs

Firstly preheat your oven to 160c if its fan assisted. I’m guessing its 180c if its non-fan and to be honest I have no idea of the gas equivalent sorry!

Grease and line three 20cm cake tins.

Put all your ingredients in a bowl and whisk until smooth. Honestly this really is the easiest chocolate cake recipe.

Once smooth divide the mixture between the tins and bake in the oven for 20-25 mins until a skewer inserted comes out clean. This time can vary depending on your oven.

Buttercream

750g icing sugar

250g unsalted butter softened

16 Oreo Cookies (I bought the box from the pound shop that has 16 cookies in it)

A few tbsp of milk

A handful of chocolate chips (optional)

Put the icing sugar, butter and milk into a bowl and whisk until smooth – usually a good 5 mins at least. Make sure to cover with a tea towel at the start to avoid covering everything in icing sugar!

Put 10 cookies in a sandwich bag and set the other aside til later. Bash the bag with a rolling pin until they resemble crumbs. You could use a food processor but for me it wasn’t worth the hassle of digging it out of the cupboard.

Take the bag of cookie crumbs and mix into the buttercream. You may find you need to add a wee bit more milk to loosen it.

Now to decorate!

Start by levelling off the top of your cakes incase they aren’t totally flat.

Sandwich each layer of cake with the buttercream and a sprinkling of cookie crumbs from the bag with 6 cookies in it.

Coat the outside and top of the cake with the remaining buttercream, add the cookies you had set aside earlier, sprinkle the remaining cookie crumbs on top and a few chocolate chips.