This is the chocolate drip cake we made for our youngest's 7th birthday. She didn't have any special requests, but like most children is quite fond of chocolate, so we thought it would be fun to make a cake literally exploding with chocolate.
We planned beforehand by collecting an assortment of different chocolates for the cake, I was careful to pick a good mix of white and milk chocolates so that the cake wouldn't look too brown and boring.
We also made our own chocolate bark to cut into shards to stand up at the back of the cake. The bark was easy to make by melting a bar of milk chocolate and smearing it onto a silicone mat. Then we drizzled melted white chocolate in ribbons over the top. Finally we threw on lots of different chocolate sprinkles and some little fudge cubes to decorate the bark. Cutting it into nice shards was a little trick as we had to make sure it didn't crack, I found if helped to use a sharp knife dipped in hot water to help melt through the chocolate as it cut.
The cake itself was a chocolate marble cake just using a basic sponge recipe. We then crumb coated it and then that had hardened, we added a layer of vanilla buttercream icing and smoothed it over the cake.
Next we made a chocolate ganache for the drippy top layer. I always find ganache a bit tricky, but I have discovered if it starts to split adding a little cold cream and beating very quickly can help save it. We poured the ganache over the iced cake and used a skewer to gently coax the chocolate to drip down the sides.
Then came the fun part of adding the chocolates. I placed the largest bits near the back first to add some height. We used the chocolate bark, so mikado biscuits, halved caramel waffles and curly whirly bars. Then we filled in the gaps with white chocolate buttons, malteasers and aero bubbles. Then a final sprinkling of chocolate sprinkles and some fudge cubes.
The birthday girl was very pleased with the end result!
We also made our own chocolate bark to cut into shards to stand up at the back of the cake. The bark was easy to make by melting a bar of milk chocolate and smearing it onto a silicone mat. Then we drizzled melted white chocolate in ribbons over the top. Finally we threw on lots of different chocolate sprinkles and some little fudge cubes to decorate the bark. Cutting it into nice shards was a little trick as we had to make sure it didn't crack, I found if helped to use a sharp knife dipped in hot water to help melt through the chocolate as it cut.
The cake itself was a chocolate marble cake just using a basic sponge recipe. We then crumb coated it and then that had hardened, we added a layer of vanilla buttercream icing and smoothed it over the cake.
Next we made a chocolate ganache for the drippy top layer. I always find ganache a bit tricky, but I have discovered if it starts to split adding a little cold cream and beating very quickly can help save it. We poured the ganache over the iced cake and used a skewer to gently coax the chocolate to drip down the sides.
Then came the fun part of adding the chocolates. I placed the largest bits near the back first to add some height. We used the chocolate bark, so mikado biscuits, halved caramel waffles and curly whirly bars. Then we filled in the gaps with white chocolate buttons, malteasers and aero bubbles. Then a final sprinkling of chocolate sprinkles and some fudge cubes.
The birthday girl was very pleased with the end result!
