with eight weeks to go till boo’s second birthday, i finally decided to work on his birthday cake.
the idea of putting little cake balls in a cake came from a link a friend shared on facebook. it seems feasible after reading about it so i decided to do something similar. different bloggers have blogged about this but i only found one blog with enough details on the concept. i didn’t follow her recipe for the cake balls or the cake but the cake worked out ok. except i need to work on the arrangements of the balls in the cake batter and in terms of taste, the cake balls were not dry at all even though they’ve been baked twice.
for the cake balls, i used a cupcake recipe i found on an old issue of Donna Hay’s magazine, tweaking it a little with less sugar and shorter baking time.
ingredients \\
125g butter, softened
3/4 cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp honey
2 eggs
1 1/4 cups (185g) plain flour, sifted
1/2 cup (125ml) milk
food colouring
method \\
preheat the oven to 150 degrees celcius. place the butter, sugar, vanilla and honey in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and creamy. gradually add the eggs and eat until well combined. add the flour, baking powder and milk and beat until just combined.
divide the batter equally into 3 bowls. add a few drops of food colouring into each bowl and mix until well combined trying not to overmix the batter to avoid a tough cake ball.
spoon the coloured batter into the cake balls tin making sure sufficient batter is placed into each mould so that the end results will be perfectly round balls.
bake the cake balls for 15 minutes. leave the cake balls to cool in the tin before removing them.
\\ makes about 25 balls (i didn't put enough batter into some of the cake balls mould so i ended up with more than 25 balls but some of them are not perfectly round)
as for the cake itself, i used the chocolate mudcake recipe from the Planet Cake by Paris Cutler book. i made this cake once for Brendan’s birthday at the beginning of the year and it tasted really good. chocolatety and moist. i made slight changes to this recipe too, using a little with less sugar, omitting the coffee granules and reducing the baking time because i divided the cake batter into two baking tins.
ingredients \\
220g butter
220g dark chocolate, chopped
160ml water
125g plain flour, sifted
125g self-raising flour, sifted
50g cocoa powder, sifted
1/2 tsp bicarbonate soda
400gm sugar
4 eggs
7 tsp vegetable oil
100ml buttermilk
method \\
preheat the oven to 160 degrees celsius. grease and line the sides and the base of two 20cm round cake tin.
put the butter, chocolate and water into a saucepan and stir over low heat until melted, then remove from the heat.
sift the flours, cocoa powder and bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl. stir in the sugar and make a well in the centre. add the combined eggs, oil and buttermilk and the chocolate mixture, stirring with a large spoon until completely combined.
pour approximately one cup of cake batter into each of the prepared cake tin so that the batter covers the bottom of the tin. place six balls into each cake tin. divide the remainder of the batter between the two cake tins making sure all the cake balls are covered with batter. bake for 1 hour 15 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer. leave the cake to cool before removing from the tin.
some tips i picked up from this round of testing \\
_ always fill the cake ball batter to the brim. it’s better to have the batter overflowing out of the vent hole like a volcano rather than a “not completely round” cake balls due to lack of cake batter to fill the space
_ always grease the cake ball pan beforehand to make it easier when removing the balls from the tin
_ arrange the cake balls closer to the side of the pan as they will move closer to the middle as the cake bakes
_ make sure there is enough cake batter to cover the cake balls, otherwise, the top of the cake will be lumpy with the cake ball lumps poking out (like what i get in my cakes)
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