Hey guys! I am so so so excited for this blog entry. I probably say that for every post, but this is hands down one of my favourite cakes. Just look at it, if I had that as my birthday cake I would be stoked.
Let me begin by explaining the cake before I write a 100 words how I love how this cake looks ha.
So I have a chocolate mud cake, layered with marshmallows in between the cakes and graham cracker crumbs, iced with rich chocolate ganache. Toasted meringue, chocolate sail, homemade russian fudge, vanilla macarons and minis more biscuits to garnish the cake. Finished off with a chocolate ganache drizzling and gold sprinkles.
I love this cake because it taste like a s'more every mouthful. You have the chocolate from the cake, rich ganache from the icing, squishy marshmallow and graham cracker crumbs for texture.
I made minis more biscuits as well to decorate the cake and drizzled them with chocolate. Homemade marshmallow kills the store brought, it has so much more depth of flavour and they are so much more bouncy, chewy and soft at the same time.
This cake is super rich, but I choose a very bitter chocolate for the ganache so the bitterness would cut out the sweetness of the marshmallows. I also toasted the marshmallows so it became a real authentic s'more. Has that crispy golden brown hard exterior and when you bite into the marshmallow out flows the gooeyness of the marshmallow. Yum.
Homemade marshmallows are so easy to make and they are 10x more delicious. Plus the best part is you can mix and match your flavours. Try cinnamon, pistachio and orange marshmallows. I remember going to my favourite cafe in New Zealand and it was called Little n Friday. My god father had brought the recipe book from that cafe for my birthday. I was in love with the cafe, the style, the food, the ambiance. I remember getting a coffee there, but they had jars of different flavoured marshmallows that you could add if you got a hot chocolate. So imagine having a coconut hot chocolate and dipping homemade coconut marshmallows into the hot beverage. I thought the was awesome and I promised myself If I ever have my own cafe I would do the same.
I am a big fan of s'mores. I love chocolate and marshmallows. A traditional s'more is a graham cracker, marshmallow and chocolate sandwiched together. I make homemade graham crackers and marshmallow because I think it makes a world of difference in texture and taste. I do have fond memories in summer we would make 'healthy' s'mores. Instead of using crackers we would use bananas. They were actually so delicious because bananas have a lot of sweetness to them everything matched nicely. We used to cut the middles out of the bananas and fill the middle with chocolate and marshmallow alternating. Wrap the bananas up firmly in tinfoil and set aside.
We used to make a campfire out of dry twigs and pieces of wood we found on the beach. Place the tinfoil bananas on top of the campfire and allow them to roast for 5 minutes.
Open up your tinfoil bananas in a bowl they will be pretty messy, but so delicious! Enjoy!
I added a bit of small detail to this chocolate sail and I loved it! I piped thin strokes of white chocolate and added some gold sprinkles that I crushed up a bit to give it some texture. I think this made my cakes look a bit different by just adding some detail to the chocolate sails and also can help by linking similar colours that are shown on the cake with the chocolate sail. So the gold from the toasted meringue to the gold sprinkles in the chocolate sail.
I really encourage you guys to make your own marshmallow, because you can alter the amount of flavour concentration you add, or the colour. When you make creme patisserie or sweet shortcrust dough and your only using the egg yolks. Reserve the egg whites and place them in a small ziplock bag and date them. Place the whites in the freezer. This way you can have fresh egg whites whenever you want without wasting eggs. I did this a lot because my main frosting contains egg whites. It is a good way to reduce waste. Sometimes I would give the egg to our dog though because it is good for them to have a shiny coat.
You can see in these photos how much marshmallows from one batch you can make. That is the greatest thing about them, you can make big batches. Make sure you store them properly and they will keep for a month. I toss mine in a mixture of icing sugar and cornstarch so they aren't sticky on the outside. Then I place them in some nice jars and store them in my cupboard.
If your interested in the recipes, keep scrolling...
Recipe:
Chocolate Smores Cake
Chocolate Sail:
Vanilla Macarons:
Graham Crackers:
Italian Meringue:
Chocolate Buttermilk Cake:
linzxvi.wixsite.com/linz/single-post/2018/05/07/Chocolate-Ombre-Piped-Rosettes-Cake
Chocolate Ganache:
Russian Fudge:
3 1/2 cups white sugar
125g butter
3 Tablespoons Golden Syrup
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
200g sweetened condensed milk
2 teaspoon vanilla
Method:
Grease a 20cm cake tin, cut four strips of baking paper longer then the width of the cake tin, lay the strips in a lightly greased cake tin in a criss cross formation. This provides an easy way to lift your fudge out of the cake tin once it has set.
Place sugar, butte, golden syrup, milk, condensed milk and salt in a saucepan. Warm over gentle heat until the sugar has dissolved about 10-15 minutes.
Bring the sugar mixture to a gentle boil and cook for 10-15 minutes until it reaches soft ball stage (120 degrees)
Remove from heat when it hits this stage and add vanilla.
Cool the fudge mixture for 5 minutes and beat with an electric beaters until the fudge has lost its gloss and is thick. About 10 minutes.
Pour into a prepared tin, and place the fudge in the fridge and allow it to set.
Once the fudge is set use the baking paper strips to lift the fudge out of the cake tin easily.
Cut with a hot sharp knife the dude into squares.
Raspberry Powder & Vanilla Bean Marshmallow:
For the gelatine bloom:
3 Tablespoons powder gelatine
1/2 cup cold water
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste
1 1/2 teaspoon raspberry flavouring
For the marshmallows:
3/4 cup water
1 1/2 cups caster sugar
1 1/4 cups corn syrup
pinch salt
For marshmallow coating
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
1/2 cup cornstarch
Method:
Grease a rectangle tin with at least a 1.5cm raise on the side. And three 18cm cake tins. Make sure you use a pastry brush and get every corner because this marshmallow stuff is sticky!
Measure the gelatine and add it to a big bowl, pour the cold water and vanilla over top of the gelatine. Mix it till it looks like apple sauce.
Alternative add raspberry favouring and red colouring for raspberry marshmallows.
Pour the 3/4 cup water, sugar, corn syrup and salt into a saucepan. Do not stir. Put the saucepan on medium heat and bring it to a full rapid boil. As the mixture boils and climbs up the sides of the saucepan, run a damp pastry brush around the sides of the pot.
This prevents sugar crystals from falling onto the mixture and causing the syrup to all crystallise.
Continue boiling the sugar mixture until it reaches 120 degrees. When it does take the pan off the heat.
Turn the mixer on medium speed and carefully pour the syrup in a steady stream down into the gelatine bloomed mixture.
When all the syrup has been added, place a clean kitchen towel over the top of the beaters and increase the speed to the highest.
Whip the marshmallows for 10 minutes, at first the liquid will be frothy and very clear. At 3 minutes the mixture begins to look opaque, white and creamy. The bowl will be warm to touch.
At 5 minutes the mixture will really thicken and leave ribbons of mixture. Beat for another 10 minutes until the mixture looks extremely thick.
The texture should resemble vanilla soft serve ice cream.
Now with a greased spatula quickly spoon out the marshmallow as quick as possible before it begins to set. Pour most of the marshmallow in the rectangle tray. Small amounts in the cake tins, (they are fillings for the cakes)
This is where you can add decorations to your marshmallows, like I added raspberry powder.
Grease your hands with coconut oil, and run your hand over top of the marshmallow to smooth the top out. Let the mixture set uncovered for 6-24 hours to set.
Sprinkle some marshmallow coating on the bench. Flip the block of marshmallow onto the dusted bench, grease your knife and begin slicing marshmallows evenly.
Coat the marshmallows in a bowl of marshmallow coating. Place in an airtight container with baking paper separating them so they don't stick to each other.
A stand mixer is highly recommended for making marshmallows. It requires a strong whisk to whip the egg whites for so long.
Assembly:
Cut in half your buttermilk cakes, and slice the top of the cakes so they are nice and flat. Pipe a ganache border, lay a marshmallow disc on top of the cake. Drizzle dark chocolate over the top of the marshmallow disc and sprinkle crumbed graham crackers. (This is usually good because you will break some crackers so you can still use them, by crushing them up and sprinkling them in the cake)
Place the next layer of cake on top, repeat this method from above until you have no more cake layers left.
Begin frosting your cake and performing a crumb coat (an icing layer that locks in all the crumbs so your final layer of icing is super smooth)
Place in the fridge once you have completed your crumb coat to set the icing.
Meanwhile make your s'mores. Grab two graham crackers, pour some melted chocolate on the crackers and place a marshmallow between the two crackers. Allow the chocolate to set to hold everything together.
Remove the cake from the fridge, begin your final frosting layer with chocolate ganache. Once completed place in the fridge for another hour to set up.
Begin making your sail, spread the dark chocolate out on baking paper, with a small cornet piping bag filled with white chocolate drizzle streaks of chocolate on the dark chocolate. Sprinkle gold sprinkles on it as well and leave to set at room temperature.
Remove cake from the fridge, and begin decorating. Pour your chocolate ganache drizzle around the sides of the cake. Place your chocolate sail towards the back of the cake.
Cut your fudge and marshmallows into squares, and begin decorating. Place small s'mores, and macarons all over the cake randomly. Crumble fudge over the top.
With a piping bag filled with Italian meringue, pipe meringue around the border of the cake, and in random places on the cake. Grab a blow torch and begin torching the meringue to give it a golden brown look.
Enjoy your s'mores cake!! One of my favourite, you have the richness from the dark chocolate, sweetness from the marshmallows and saltiness from the graham crackers.
Thats all xx
