LAYER CAKE WITH CHOCOLATE GANACHE AND CUSTARD FILLING

“I suppose I wanted to have my cake and eat it.

But then again, what were you going to do with your cake if not eat it?

Frame it?

Use it as a sachet in your underwear drawer?”

― Marian Keyes, Watermelon

 

For the Reluctant Chef celebrates 500 facebook likes! Since the Reluctant Chef likes nothing more than celebrating pretty much anything we're going to party it up with this over the top double layer cake with chocolate ganache and custard filling.

Thank you to all those people who keep checking in to see what's going on with the world's smallest food blog. Thank you also for all those spambots trying to sell me hemarroid cream and anti-depressant medication who I suspect make up a large portion of the hits Blogger is counting. Thank you all! I'd like to repay you with the recipe for this elaborate cake  - it's definitely meant for an occassion.

I love that this cake has so much random stuff going on. There's a layer of cake! Ooh there's another layer! Oh my god is that chocolate on top? Is the whole thing stuffed with custard?! Yes! Yes! This is all true. If you have fruit/candy/sprinkes/nuts on hand you can thrown them on here and turn this into a real carnival. Don't hold back! The time for restraint was gone the moment you decided to bake this.

Serves atleast 8

Adapted from Nigella Lawson

 

What you’ll need:

For the cake

200 gm flour

3 tbsp custard powder

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

5 eggs

225 gm melted butter

200 gm caster sugar

3 tbsp milk

For the filling

125 gm sugar

4 tsp custard powder

75 gm butter

¼ cup boiling water

For the icing

200 gm chocolate

3 tbsp water

*sprinkles if you want to decorate some more*

How to:

 

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and butter 2 equal sized dishes. Put aside.

 

2. Put all the ingredients for the sponge cake together and blend. Divide equally between the 2 pans and bake for 20 mins.

 

Note: The best way to do this is to usually sift all the dry ingredients together, then add the eggs, then the butter and to whisk everything well. Add the milk last to make the batter wetter.
 

3. Once your cakes are baked – leave them out to cool for a little while.

 

4. While the cakes are cooling, plunk in all the ingredients for the custard filling and whisk really well. Make sure the water is really hot so the custard powder dissolves and you don’t have a powdery residue left on your tongue while eating the filling.
 

 5. Spread the custard filling generously between the two cakes and stick them together. No need to be very neat, a little of the bright yellow custard oozing out between the sponge adds colour.
 

 

6. Melt the chocolate in a pan and add water or heavy cream if you need to liquefy the chocolate some more. Once melted pour on top of the custard sponge sandwich you’ve created.
 

7. Decorate some more if you want.