04 September 2020

Striped Coffee Cake


I have stepped up my cake game with a Finch Bakery scraper (and it's the medium striped one). 
For my Dad's birthday I put it to the test with a coffee cake - one of his faves!
You can always tell which pages of the recipe book have been used!

Ingredients

For the cake:
- this is the same recipe as the one for my rainbow cake.
  • 10 oz / 250g Caster Sugar
  • 10 oz / 250g Stork Margarine
  • 5 eggs
  • 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
  • 10 oz / 250g Self Raising Flour
  • 2 tsp Baking Powder
  • 2 tsp coffee mixed with a little warm water

For the buttercream icing:
  • 300g Butter
  • 500g Icing Sugar
  • A Splash of Milk (around 5/6 tbsp)
  • 2 tsp coffee mixed with a little warm water
  • A splash of vanilla extract

For the drip:
  • Chocolate spread

Method

For the cake:

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/ 180
2. (If you use a food processor just whack it all in and mix it up in there.)
3. Cream the butter and the sugar together in a bowl.
4. Beat in the eggs and vanilla extract to the mixture.
5. Sift in the flour and baking powder, add it in a bit of a time and fold the mixture.
6. Finally, pour in the coffee mix and combine.
7. Divide the mixture into your tins and bake for 15-30 minutes until golden brown
8. Take out and do the skewer test to check it’s ready and leave to cool.







For the buttercream icing:

1. Beat the butter so it’s very soft, maybe for 2 to 3 minutes (or else the icing sugar will go EVERYWHERE!)
2. Add in the icing sugar and mix together until it’s all combined.
3. Add in milk as appropriate – soft and spreadable but not too runny or soft (hopefully that makes sense).
4. I flavoured most of the buttercream with a coffee/ water mix, and then a little bit with vanilla which we'll use later.











Assembling the cake:

1. I always put a little bit of buttercream icing on the base of the cake stand so it won’t move everywhere.
2. Place down the first layer of cake, spoon on 1-2 dessertspoon/tablespoons of coffee buttercream, use a pallet knife (or just a spoon) to spread across the cake base.
3. Repeat with the other 2 cakes. - Although I wish I divided to mixture further to make 4 layers.
4. Once all is assembled, do a crumb coating of the cake. To do this just blob on a few spoons of coffee buttercream around the cake and in between the layers, you don’t need very much, just a light covering of the sponge. My new scraper made this process a lot easier.
5. Leave buttercream to set in the fridge/freezer - freezer if you can but I couldn't so I just turned the fridge down as low as possible haha.






6. I then piped buttercream all around the sides of the cake and used the Finch Bakery scraper to create a neat finish to it. To perfect this I ran it under the hot tap to make sure the sides of the cake were as smooth as possible.
7. Then I used the other side of the scraper to create the stripes with a medium-hard level of pressure on it to create deep striped holes for the vanilla buttercream later on.
8. Again, I placed the cake in the fridge/ freezer to help set the buttercream so the coloured stripes wouldn't blend as much.













9. I actually left the cake in the fridge overnight, so in the morning I piped the vanilla buttercream into the 'dug out' stripes. I then took the straight edge side of the scraper to press the buttercream into the holes. There were a few holes after I did this so filled them in in buttercream. This process took quite a while and it wasn't perfect but I was very happy with it considering it was my first time! I also used the hot tap to try and create a smooth finish.
















10. To achieve the 'drip' look I melted a tub of chocolate spread (mine was from Morrisons, although I don't know if I'd recommend it, I can't tell it was my lack of knowledge or the brand's  fault for the failed look - I'd like to believe it's the brand, haha!) Anyway, I then took a spoon and tried to carefully put it round the edges of the cake to drip down, however it was too thick and did NOT look perfect in the slightest ... but practice makes perfect, so we'll see next time?!
11. Finally I put some vanilla buttercream on the top of the cake and created a 'swirl effect' with a fork. I think this looks so effective and hides the mess of not-so-smooth buttercream as I can never perfect that on top! I then piped around the edges with coffee buttercream with my 'Julie' nozzle by Finch Bakery.










Please ignore my bad cake cutting skills!


And that's it, I was super impressed by my striped scraping and it tasted delicious!

- Ailsa xxx