Saturday 1 June 2013

Pigs in Mud Cake Recipe

These last few weeks I have been pondering Leo's birthday, and birthdays mean one thing...

Cake.

The cake thoughts have made me wonder what I could possibly bake for my little man's second birthday. All sorts of weird and wonderful creations have entered my mind, and I have pondered whether I have the baking skills to cook anything of remembrance.. The good kind of course... 

With just less than a month to the big day I decided to try and cook up a storm in the kitchen, along with the cooking I made a BIG mess of both the kitchen...and myself.

The mess was all for a very worthy cause though... I was trying my hand at cooking the Pigs In Mud Cake!

Now I have to say I was skeptical as to how this may turn out...But as you can see from the below photograph it could have been much worse...


What do you need to bake a Piggy Mud Cake?
This recipe will make 3 Mississippi Mud Cakes or one big one...

- 250g unsalted butter – softened
- 600g caster sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 470g plain flour 
- 140g cocoa powder
- 2tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 table spoons of double cream
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- A little bit of water

You will also need:
- Around 20 Kit Kats
- 400g Chocolate

I made one big cake which took a little longer to cook, in the end it took just over an hour on 180°C.

Now before you get started prepare yourself to make a mess, because if you are using a mixer like I did...you are more than likely going to follow in my footsteps!

Now what do you do?
- Pick out a nice large mixing bowl and add the butter and sugar and then cream together until light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs into the creamed mixture one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
- Add the Vanilla extract into the mixture.
- In a an additional bowl, sift the flour, cocoa powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt together.
- Begin to add the dry ingredients to the creamed butter and sugar and mix well until it is all combined.
- Add in the double cream,
- You may need to add in some water here to free the mixture up a little.
-Put the batter into the prepared cake tin.
-Bake for approximately 1 hour or until cooked.

Making your piggies!


Now this part is purely down to your creativity. You can make as many piggies that will fit in your mud bath. You can make them out of Marzipan or Moulding Chocolate or anything else that you can model with and of course... eat!

I opted to use Marzipan that I then coloured with Pink Food Colouring Gel, and I have to admit that it was easier than I thought it would be. You will need a sharp object such as a cocktail stick to add in the details that you want.

Making your Chocolate Ganache (Or Mud!)

For your mud bath and sides of your cake you will need:

- 250ml of Double Cream
- 400g of Chocolate (I opted for Cadburys!)

 Put the cream in a saucepan and heat it up to almost boiling. Then take it off the heat and begin adding in your chocolate, keep stirring it until it is all melted into the mixture. Then take a seat, put on the kettle and catch up on the soaps, as this is now a waiting game! 

You have to wait for the Ganache to cool so that it becomes a thick consistency that is less likely to run when you add it onto your cake. 

I actually prepared the Ganache while the cake was cooking so it was ready to use by the time the cake cooled.


Adding your Kit Kats...

Take your Kit Kats and break them into strips of 2.

Once your cake has cooled slather the Ganache onto the sides of your cake, and add the Kit Kats around the circumference. If you still have a small gap that needs filling break the Kit Kat in two again and fit it in. I advise to have some ribbon or something similar to hand in order to tie it all together as the Kit Kats can be a bit fiddly and don't always want to stay in place.

One your Kit Kats are in position you can pour the rest of the Ganache into the centre of the cake, and then simply pop your piggies into their bath.

Then it just needs popping in the fridge to set.


A few little tips I picked up while making this cake...
- When the cake is cooked, if there is a slight rise in the centre you can cut this straight before adding the Ganache, or you will end up with an uneven surface like in my cake. Or you can simply make more Ganache to fill it up, I feel we could have done with some more!
- Put the piggies further into the centre as they do 'drift' a little when you put it to set.

Now after making this cake and being pleasantly surprised by how it turned out... I have decided that this is not the cake for Leo's birthday!  Instead I have opted for a Timmy Time theme and have drawn up a stencil for the cake...That I will be attempting over the next week or so!

Now this could be potentially more tricky than the pigs in mud!






1 comment:

  1. What a super-cool cake ! Well done and thank you for sharing

    ReplyDelete

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