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Chocolate Finger Cake
Tuesday 27 March 2012
Hey everyone!!! I baked this cake for my mom and sister's birthday last weekend. It went really well and I gotta say, this was the most challenging cake that I've baked so far! This cake is super duper delicious and is definitely worth all the effort! Plus, the cake looks fantastic and the wide-eyed looks you'll get from others will surely make you proud!
This recipe was derived from Lorraine Pascale's BBC programme: Baking Made Easy. You can find that through here. Although the recipe you will find in this post will be my own rendition.
 Ingredients:
For the cake
For the buttercream
For the decoration
Method:
1 - Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4 and line a 21cm/9in round deep cake tin with baking paper and brush or spray with oil.
2 - Cream together the butter and sugar in a large bowl until they begin to go pale. Add half of the eggs and half of the flour and mix well. Add the rest of the eggs, flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking powder and beat for a minute or two until the mixture is uniform. I suggest running the dry ingredients through a sieve first to avoid lumps in the mixture.
3 - Tip the cake mixture into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for about 30-40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Then leave the cake to cool in the tin.
4 - Meanwhile, make the buttercream: put the butter and icing sugar in a bowl and whisk together until the mixture goes fluffy. Add the cooled, melted chocolate and whisk for a further 2 minutes. If you are creaming butter by hand, be patient! I know it can be long and tiring, but keep doing so until you get to the right consistency. I suggest melting the chocolate by boiling water in a saucepan and placing it in a bowl big enough to rest on top of the pan. Don't let the water touch the bottom of the bowl or get any water in the chocolate; otherwise, it won't be smooth and it will be grainy!
5 - Once the cake is completely cool, remove it from the tin. Carefully cut the top flat with a large serrated knife so it becomes a nice flat top. Eat the cuttings for a quick cake taster!
6 - Now here comes the tricky part. Pascale's recipe calls for a cake turntable but if you don't have one, like me, you can easily make one by turning a large bowl upside down and placing a cake board on top of it. Make sure that the cake board is much much bigger than the actual cake size since assembling and slicing the cake requires a larger surface for all the mess that entails! This DIY cake turntable is actually pretty good because when you place your cake down, it's very difficult for it to topple over and plus, you can spin it around like the real thing!
7 - Turn the cake upside down on a 21cm/9in cake board, which will you use as a base for your cake. If you've got a different cake tin size from this recipe then make sure to get the exact same size for the cake board! One tip is to spread a small amount of buttercream on the cake board before placing the cake so it acts like a 'glue' that holds the cake to the board. Then split the cake horizontally and sandwich the top and bottom with a 1 and a half cm of buttercream.
8 - Spread half of the remaining buttercream all over the top and the sides of the cake, making it as smooth as possible. If you wish, you can spread the icing on top of the cake board which acts as your 'base' to make your cake seem talller! Put it in the fridge to set before doing another layer - this makes it easier to get neat squared-off edges. You can put it in the fridge for at least 15 minutes but I prefer to leave it there for a good half an hour to make sure that it sets properly! Aim to make the second layer as neatly as possible and roughly it should look like this:
9 - Gently push the chocolate fingers vertically onto the sides of the cake, positioning them as straight as possible and making sure they touch the bottom.
10 - The last step is the best part! You can choose to decorate this cake how you want it to be! I decided to surround the edges with strawberries and sprinkle grated white chocolate on top! And lastly, I wrapped it with a cake ribbon to give it that extra baang!!
 
I bought my cake ribbon and cake board online at The Craft Company. They're a UK-based company, specializing in cake decorating supplies and the customer service is good. My order came within the next 2 days! Overall, this cake took me about 3-4 hours to make! I did take my time though, to ensure that the cake is perfect for my mom and sister's birthday! The cake itself was amazing!!! It was light and moist and not sickly sweet! The best part about this cake are the ooohh's and ahhh's of awe that I got from my family and friends not just from eating it, but from looks alone!
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Profile
Hii!!! I'm Anna. A 21 year old Media student in London with a baking obsession. I like to make cakes, desserts or any kinds of sweet things and blog about them! Links
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