Moist Chocolate Jam Cake with Spotted Chocolate Collar

Hi! Welcome to my very first post! I found this recipe on the Nigella Lawson web site (submitted by a reader) and thought it sounded good. I also wanted to attempt the chocolate collar for myself :) Here is the link if you want to check it out... http://www.nigella.com/recipe/recipe_detail.aspx?rid=11989

INGREDIENTS


Cake:
125g butter
125g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 eggs
160g strawberry jam (a bit more if you want to put extra jam in the middle)
40g self-raising flour
125g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
60g cocoa powder
185ml buttermilk
cocoa powder for dusting

Chocolate icing:
150g white chocolate
125g butter
80ml cream

Chocolate collar:
40g white chocolate, melted
80g dark chocolate, melted

METHOD


1. Pre-heat oven to 180 ºC/gas 4.

2. Brush a deep 9 inch round cake tin with butter.

3. Line base/sides with parchment.

4. Beat butter, sugar & vanilla essence together. Add eggs gradually beating well after each addition.Add jam; beat until smooth.

5. Fold in sifted flours, soda & cocoa alternately with buttermilk.

Stir until smooth.Pour mixture into prepared tin.

6. Bake for 40 mins or until skewer comes out clean.

7. Leave cake in tin for 5 mins until turning onto wire rack. Cool completely before icing.

8. Meanwhile, combine white chocolate, butter & cream in small pan. Stir over low heat until melted & smooth.Leave to cool (I leave in fridge until 'mud' thickness)

Leave in fridge until thick and spreadable

EXTRA STEP - OPTIONAL: Split cake into two layers using a serrated knife (make sure it is completely cool before you do this). You can do this by either marking/scoring around the outside and then bringing the knife in towards the middle, or (as I did) measure the height of the cake with a ruler and use toothpicks to mark halfway. Then cut around the cake with the knife just above the toothpicks. You can then bring the knife in to the centre and split the cake. Spread the bottom layer with jam and place the other layer on top before icing.

9. Place cake on serving plate, spread sides and top evenly with white chocolate icing.

Don't worry too much about the icing being even/crumbs, as the chocolate collar will hide the sides, and the top will be dusted with cocoa powder.

10. To make the chocolate collar.... Measure the height of the cake (approx 2.5 inches) and cut a long rectangular strip out of baking paper (the circumference of the cake).

I measured using a piece of string and then a ruler. TIP: Make sure you add an extra centimetre or two to the measurement so you can overlap the collar and cut later. You also have to measure the height of the cake to cut your strip to size.

Baking paper strip with cling wrap underneath to save time cleaning up/getting chocolate on your counter.

Drop dots of melted white chocolate randomly over strip. Allow to set, then spread a layer of melted dark chocolate over the entire strip.

Melt the white chocolate first, then the dark once your white spots have set.

Allow to set completely, otherwise they will smear/melt when you spread the dark chocolate on top. Mine took ages to set!

Dark chocolate spread on top. Be careful not to dislodge the white spots, and make sure the dark chocolate is not too hot or they will melt. Leave to set just enough that it doesn't drip when you pick the strip up, but not too much or it won't stick to the cake.

You can see how the outside of the collar will look

11. Working quickly, wrap paper, chocolate-side in, around cake (this is the REALLY messy bit!).Hold paper strip in place for a couple of mins until the strip holds itself on.

The best way to do it is to life the strip at each corner and wrap it around starting at the side furthest from you, bringing around the meet in front of you (for example, like putting a necklace on for someone else). You can overlap it at the seam and cut this to size later.

12. Put the cake in the fridge until the chocolate collar is set.

13. When set, carefully peel away the paper. Refrigerate the cake until ready to serve. Just before serving, dust the top of the cake heavily with sifted cocoa powder. Cake can be made a day in advance. Refrigerate until needed then serve at room temperature.

I also made a lattice decoration with some of the left over dark chocolate, by drizzling it onto baking paper and waiting for it to set.

Dust with sifted cocoa powder

Jam layer in the middle

Yum!

So there you have it. The cake was really nice, very moist, but quite rich and sweet. I'm glad I added the jam in the middle as I felt the cake didn't taste very jammy, just chocolatey. The cake is not difficult to make, but I did find it was quite time consuming, just waiting for things to set before I could move on to the next step. My white chocolate spots took AGES to set, a good few hours, but I think that's because I just bought normal white chocolate. If you buy proper baking chocolate it would probably work better. Also it was quite a humid day, so try to keep it somewhere cool to set. The collar is a bit fiddly but I think it's a fairly easy way of making the cake look more special (and it hides any messy icing - I'm terrible at getting smooth icing so I like that!). The collar didn't end up perfectly straight and round because of the bends/folds in the baking paper, so not sure how you could get it to stay perfectly round?

I would suggest making the cake first, and then maybe doing the icing and chocolate collar the next day, as I did it all in one day, and it ended up taking ages because of waiting for things to set. If you plan to serve it for guests, give yourself plenty of time to do the icing and collar and allow it to set, then take it our of the fridge and hour or so before serving. Definitely not one you can whip up at the last minute but I enjoyed making it (and eating it!!).

Let me know if you give this one a go and if you have any tips to make it better. Happy baking :)