Recipe for the cake- Chocolate Marble Cake

I used three times the proportion of this recipe for the puppy dog cake.  This recipe makes a loaf cake.  it is a great afternoon tea cake!

Ingredients:

• 100 g of chocolate 64 to 70% cocoa
• 180 g butter melted
• 150 g of brown sugar (cassonade in French)
• a drop of vanilla essence
• 4 eggs
• 200 g of self raising flour or 200 g of plain flour and 1 heaped teaspoon of raising powder (if using raising powder in sachet, one sachet).

Method:

1. Butter and flour well your tins. Warm up the oven on 180°C.
2. Mix the sugar and butter well, then mix in the egg yolks one at the time, add the vanilla.
3. Mix in the flour and raising powder and divide in two bowls.
4. Melt the chocolate.  In one of the bowl, add the melted chocolate.
5. Beat the egg white to snow. Divide in each of the bowls and fold gently.
6. Pour in the tins alternating the mixes.
7. Bake for about 45 minutes until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out dry. Then turn on a cooling rack.

Concept

For this puppy dog birthday cake you will need two bowls, one for the body, one for the head. then four ramequins or cake rims.  If you google puppy dog cakes on the web or search for this on P interest, you will find that concept (but not the recipes).

The cake here was for 20 children, quite a few parents had some too.

Decoration

Ingredients:

• White fondant (you can use the shop one), plan for 1 kg to be comfortable
• Food colouring (red, blue,yellow)
• Corn flour
• Thin gloves (to prevent having coloured hands)
• strawberry or apricot jam, heated up and diluted if required (must be able to brush it)
• Marzipan: 70 g of almond meal, 70 g of icing sugar, food colouring (pink here), about 1/2 egg white
• Small cupcake decorations to decorate the collar.

Method

When the cakes are cold, place them on the serving dish in their final position.  You can use a chopping board covered in baking paper or aluminium foil.

Roll out the white fondant on a non stick surface, I use a silicone rolling mat (in green on the photo).  To help prevent the fondant to stick to the rolling-pin and mat, place corn flour in a bowl nearby and use as you would use dusting flour.

Before covering a piece (whatever the colour) with fondant, you need to brush it with the warm jam, this will be your “glue”.  Do this only one piece at the time.

Place the piece to cover at height, if you have a cake decorating lazy Susan, this is perfect, otherwise use a tall cylindrical plastic jar (like me) or glass jar.

Brush the jam, transfer the fondant. Trim the bottom excesses.  With your hands, gently shape the fondant to the cake’s shape.  Use corn flour (a touch) on your hands if necessary to prevent sticking/help smoothing.  I left a little bit of fondant tucked underneath (I did not cut the top of the cake flat).

Do so for the body and head sections.

Prepare some brown fondant: in a small bowl mix about 1 teaspoon of red with a few drops of blue until purple. Add some yellow, you will get a brown colour.  In terms of fondant quantity, you would need the equivalent of a 250 g block of butter to be comfortable.  Put your gloves on.  Mix to the fondant a bit of colouring at the time until obtaining the desired shade of brown. It will be very sticky, at the end, add some corn flour to stiffen a bit.

You will need to brush jam on the bottom of each new piece of fondant , but very lightly to avoid the jam to stick out.

Roll small balls of fondant (between pea size to walnut size) and place randomly to make the dog coat.

For the ears, you can choose to alter a bit the brown colour.  Then use 2 large walnut size balls, place side by side on the mat and roll at the same time to obtain very similar shapes. Place the ears.

For the collar, roll the marzipan with you hand in a little snake, flatten a bit and place between the two main cakes.  For the tail, prepare in a similar way the shape of the tail.  Then roll it into some brown fondant and place on the cake.

For the eyes, use blue colouring or a mix and mix to a very small quantity of fondant.  Again roll two pea size balls at the same time and place on the cake.

For the nose, I used marzipan (I had run out of fondant all together), darkened the hue and used pieces of lollies from the lolly jar for the nostrils.  I used a toothpick to hold it in place.

With a dry kitchen brush, brush away all the excess corn flour.

Cover with cell wrap and leave at room temperature until the party.