Have you tried the latest cake craze yet? I can’t get enough of the colorful buttercream cakes with chocolate dripping down the sides- as you can probably notice from my Instagram. A drip cake is so versatile, fun and tempting that it’s easy to see why everyone loves them.
There are classic chocolate drips to neon, those left rustic, natural, and beautiful to those covered in sprinkles, donuts, sweets etc. Whichever style you choose, make sure your chocolate ganache isn’t too runny as it slides right off the sides and pools at the bottom of the cake stand. Too thick, and you are trying to force your drips to look natural and not like blobs left on the side of your cake.
Make sure your cake is thoroughly chilled before applying your drippy ganache and make sure you work with confidence! Use a spoon to first add a few drips over the top edge of the cake. Next, pour more ganache on the top of the cake, pushing it just to the edge with a small offset spatula.
A couple of tips when creating your drip cake:
Pick your palette. For my cake I chose to stick with colors, textures, and chocolate related to the flavors and colors already occurring in my cake – chocolate and custard.
Add some height! One of the signature elements of this style of cake is a tall element backing the rest of the design. Some use chocolate shards or chocolate “sails” or even just some buttercream swirls.
- Chocolate Cake
- 100 g Vegetable Oil
- 340 g All-purpose flour
- 60 g Unsweetened Cocoa powder
- 2 tsp Baking powder
- 1 tsp Baking soda
- 400 g white sugar
- 8 Large eggs
- 280 g Buttermilk
- 280 g Hot Coffee
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp salt
- Buttercream
- 450g soft butter
- 900g icing sugar
- 4 tablespoons milk
- food colouring
- custard flavouring
- Chocolate Ganache
- 100g dark chocolate chips
- 140ml double cream
- chocolates
- sprinkles
- Preheat oven to 175°C. Grease and flour 3 cake pan of 6 inches diameter.
- Whisk buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla until smooth. Set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the flat beater, mix the flour, cocoa, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt on low speed for 30 seconds.
- Pour buttermilk and egg mixture over dry ingredients starting from low speed and increasing slowly. Add hot boiling coffee and beat 1 or 2 minutes maximum or until you see no lumps. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. You can do this manually too using a whisk. Pour mix evenly into cake pans and bake over a baking tray 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
- Cool the cakes in their pans on a wire rack for 20 minutes. Place a wire rack on top of the cake pan and invert, lifting off the pan. Let cool at room temperature.
- To make your buttercream place the soft butter in a free-standing mixer and beat for 6 minutes until pale. slowly add in the icing sugar a bit at a time alternating with the milk. Beat again for 10 minutes. Add in the flavouring and colouring and beat again until combined.
- Place the first chocolate cake onto a cake board or cake stand. Using a pallet knife spread a thin layer of the custard flavoured buttercream over the cake. Then top with the next chocolate cake. Repeat until you have used all cakes.
- Use a small amount of buttercream to give the cake a crumb coat. Place the cake in the fridge for 30 minutes. Using the remaining buttercream cover your cake. Smooth the side’s and top with a cake smoother.
- To make the chocolate ganache break the chocolate and place into a bowl.Heat the double cream in a heatproof jug in the microwave for 1 minute.Pour the hot double cream over the chocolate and leave for a couple minutes.Then begin to stir until all the chocolate has melted.
- Once smooth pour over the cake and allow it to fall down the sides of the cake. Decorate with sprinkles and chocolates.
- Crumb Coat- A crumb coat is a thin layer of frosting that's spread over the cake first. If you've ever simply tried to frost a cake with just one thick layer of frosting, you know all too well that little stray crumbs usually get caught in it. A crumb coat prevents that. Think of it as a base coat; it latches onto these crumbs so that the second, thicker coat won't. Whether it's a tall birthday cake or a simple single-layer cake, a crumb coat is helpful when your goal is a perfectly frosted creation.
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