Monday, May 07, 2012

Caramac choc cake, for a boy turning 8

I had seen a local bakery offering Caramac cupcakes, and bought some of the 'chocolate' bars when I saw them, in preparation for trying it myself at some point.  I didn't know if they used the chocolate in both the sponge and the icing, and thought I wouldn't ask - as they probably wouldn't tell me.
We have some good friends, K & M, whom we don't see often enough, and had arranged to catch up the day after their son J's 8th birthday.  After pinning K down to some of his likes and dislikes, I decided upon a small chocolate cake with Caramac buttercream icing and a number 8 picked out in boy-ish colour Mini Smarties.
But the icing was proving a bit tricky.  I melted 4 bars, as I really wanted to taste the flavour in the icing.  I let the mix cool a little, then poured it into slightly less than usual amount of sifted icing sugar.  I had thought that the melted mix would substitute for a bit of the butter, so added less of that too.  And was not impressed with the result.  It was almost grainy.  So I added more butter and a touch of milk...
And got this, still not right.  After a bit more playing around with ingredients it was workable but I would need to try again and note down exactly how much of everything I used in order to repeat it.  Still, it was smooth to the taste and spreadable (though wouldn't have been easy to pipe) and thus the cake was completed.
For future reference, I would level the cake - even such a small one.  I didn't think it would end up looking so rounded, it didn't appear that bad when 'naked'.  Still, the birthday boy loved it (it was a surprise) the kids gobbled it up, adults too!  Hooray.

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