TIRAMISU LAYER CAKE WITH OMBRE MASCARPONE FROSTING

THIS CAKE. Oh, promise me you’ll make it? I’m aware it’s not immediately evident here on the blog, but I love to bake. I started to bake back when I was a kid, way before I learnt to cook actual meals. Baking is what I did to avoid boredom, my favourite weekend activity growing up in a rural village, far away from my school friends. I loved to get creative in the kitchen, adapting recipes as I saw fit to keep things interesting. And more recently, I fulfilled a dream of mine – to bake my own wedding cake. And it was beautiful, a 6-tier tower of elegant vanilla cupcakes, topped off with a 6 inch chocolate layer cake (with vanilla frosting!) for the chocolate-loving bride and groom. It was simply decorated with white sugar roses, white sprinkles and three pastel roses on top. It was perfect.

I was keen to make a layer cake with ombre frosting as I’ve never tried that technique before. It was surprisingly easy and the effect was incredible! Naturally, the cake layers had to be chocolate, coffee and vanilla. I don’t actually use vanilla when I make a genuine tiramisu but you can’t go wrong really, can you? I made a simple coffee syrup to soak the cake layers but I wished I had made more. As such, the recipe as written calls for twice the volume of syrup that I actually used but I’m absolutely confident it will work just fine for you. Alternatively, if you didn’t fancy making a syrup, you could soak the cake layers with a coffee liqueur instead – Kahlua would be perfect!

Ingredients

• 225 g unsalted butter (1 cup)
• 225 g golden caster sugar (1 cup)
• 225 g plain flour (1 1/2 cups)
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda baking soda
• 4 large eggs
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 1/2 vanilla pod seeds scraped
• 1 tablespoon espresso powder
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• For the coffee syrup
• 2 tablespoons espresso powder
• 80 g golden caster sugar (1/2 cup)
• 120 ml water (1/2 cup)
• For the mascarpone frosting
• 750 g mascarpone (26 ounces)
• 115 g icing sugar (1 cup) sifted
• 1-2 tablespoons milk
• 1/2 vanilla pod seeds scraped
• 1 teaspoon espresso powder
• 25 g 70% dark chocolate (1 ounce)
• To finish
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C fan/180°C/350°F. Grease and line 2 (or 4 if you have them and the oven space!) 6" loose bottomed cake tins.
2. Start by making the base cake mixture. You can make this like you would a regular cake, by creaming the butter and sugar, then beating in the eggs, milk and vanilla and then folding in the flour and raising agents. However, as you're going to be splitting the mixture and adding more flavourings, it really is easiest to simply make this in the food processor. The results are just as good.
3. To prepare the cake mixture in the food processor: place the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder and bicarb into the bowl of the food processor. Pulse a few times until the ingredients are combined. Add the eggs one by one, processing briefly after each one. Finish by adding the milk and vanilla seeds and process until just combined. Take care not to overmix the batter.
4. ..........................................

for full instruction please see ; www.eatloveeats.com

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