Chocolate collar cake

It’s been over a week since we promised a chocolate cake recipe, so I think it’s about time to post one :P

Karla and I were at Borders one day during finals week, attempting to study for exams but mostly g-chatting with each other, even though we were sitting at the same table. During one of our breaks, I was browsing through a cookbook and saw a cake so pretty that I immediately wanted to go home and bake it. I settled for buying the book, and we managed to get a decent amount of studying done ;-)

Karla and I and our friend Carrie got together once exams were over and everyone was back from visiting family and, after a delicious zucchini lasagna dinner (we’ll post later!), we gave this cake a shot. The recipe is from the book Crazy for Chocolate, published by Bay Books:

Ingredients:

Chocolate cake:

125g (4 oz) butter

1 1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

2 eggs

1/2 cup strawberry/ mixed berry jam

1 1/3 cup plain flour

1 1/3 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup cocoa powder (can use melted dark chocolate)

3/4 cup buttermilk

Chocolate buttercream icing:

1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar

2 egg whites

~6 oz butter/margarine

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

4 oz melted and cooled dark chocolate

Chocolate collar:

~ 1 oz. White chocolate melts, melted

~ 2.5 oz. Semi sweet chocolate melts, melted

1. Preheat oven to 350° F (180° C). Grease an 8 inch square (or 9 inch round) cake tin with butter.


2. Beat butter, sugar and vanilla essence until light and creamy. Add eggs and beat well. Add jam and beat until smooth.


3. Add sifted flour, baking soda and cocoa alternately with buttermilk and mix well.


4. Pour mixture into prepared tin and bake for 45 minutes or until skewer comes out clean when inserted in the center.


5. Cool in pan for 5 minutes and transfer to wire rack for cooling completely.


6. Chocolate buttercream icing (recipe source: Off the Shelf by Donna Hay ): Beat together the egg whites and sugar until soft peaks form. Add the butter, a little at a time, and keep beating. Stir in vanilla essence and melted dark chocolate. (Do not refrigerate icing before spreading over cake.) Spread sides and top of cake evenly with the icing.


7. Chocolate collar: Measure the height and length of sides of the cake and cut four rectangular strips out of baking paper according to those dimensions. If you don’t have baking paper (we didn’t!!), you can use any thick paper cut to the required dimensions and wrapped in plastic wrap.


8. Drop dots of melted white chocolate randomly (or in any pattern you want) on a strip. Allow to set, and then spread a layer of melted semi sweet chocolate over the entire strip. Quickly stick the paper, chocolate-side in, on the side of the cake. Repeat with the remaining strips. Allow to set.


9. Carefully peel the paper away. Refrigerate the cake until ready to serve.


10. Optional: if the collar doesn’t evenly match up with the top of the cake (or even if it does!), grate some solid white chocolate and sprinkle the shavings on top of the cake.

Our kitchen was kind of a mess when we were done, but it was well worth the final product!

~Gayatri