Chateau Gateau

Roopa

My friend is having a baby! Another friend threw a surprise Baby Shower, so I obviously said I could make the cake. The gender is going to be a surprise, so I wanted the whole thing to be pretty gender neutral. The request was chocolate cake with cream cheese icing, which kind of dictated the colour scheme. I bought some Sprinkles through the Sweetapolita bake shop to realize my vision (and accidentally signed up for a Sprinkles of the Month club, but that’s another story), and 3D printed a cake topper. I was really happy with how it turned out, and more importantly, so was Linda!

I used this chocolate cake recipe from Sweetapolita. It’s a little more involved than the average chocolate cake, but it’s really quite rich and excellent. I used a pretty standard cream cheese icing, but with more icing sugar than normal to get the piping stability I needed. I also kept putting the icing and cake in the fridge while decorating – cream cheese icing is delicious, but not particularly stable at room temperature!

CHOCOLATE CAKE

INGREDIENTS

• 145 g dark chocolate (I used Callebaut)
• 260 g unsalted butter, cut into small squares
• 315 g cake flour
• 25 g cocoa
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 4 eggs
• 200 g granulated sugar
• 220 g brown sugar
• 8 g vanilla
• 500 mL sour cream

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Line and grease 3 x 8″ cake pans.
2. Melt the butter at low heat in a saucepan. Once melted, add the chocolate in and mix until melted. Set aside.
3. Sift together flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
4. In a stand mixer, beat the eggs, sugar, and vanilla on medium until light and fluffy.
5. At a low speed, mix the cooled chocolate mixture into the sugar mixture.
6. At a low speed, alternate mixing the dry and wet ingredients into the chocolate mixture, starting and ending with the dry ingredients. Do not overmix.
7. Spread the batter evenly in the three pans. If possible, weigh them to get the best results.
8. Bake for 30 – 40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
9. Let the cakes cool for 20 minutes, then invert them onto cooling racks.

CREAM CHEESE ICING

INGREDIENTS

• 454 g butter
• 400 g cream cheese (I used Island Farms)
• 5+ cups icing sugar (I used 1 bag)
• pinch of salt

DIRECTIONS

1. Cream butter until light and fluffy.
2. Mix in cream cheese until well mixed.
3. Add icing sugar until desired texture is reached.

After everything was iced, I made some little fondant feet and used some edible shimmer powder on them. I then covered the cake in Frosted Twinkle Sprinkles and stuck in the cake topper! I managed to forget my cake box while transporting the cake, so instead I had to have an umbrella person (because Vancouver) but the cake got there in one piece!