Louise Lennox makes her chocolate tin-can cake on Today with Maura and Dáithí.
Ingredients
Prep time: 15 minutes
Bake time: 30 minutes
Decorate time: 20 minutes
Feeds: 4
Shopping list for the cake:
- 60g caster sugar
- 60g butter - softened
- 1 large egg
- 50g self-raising flour
- 10g cocoa powder
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
Decorate:
- 1/3 recipe for Swiss vanilla frosting
- 5 different gel food colouring
- 2 tablespoons chocolate spread
- Hot water
Stuff you’ll need:
- 1 Tin can – washed and dried
- Baking paper
- Bowl
- Whisk
- Spoon
- Knife
- Chopping board
- Scissors
- 5 small piping bags or zip lock freezer bags
- Small butter knife
Method
Let’s bake:
- Put all the cake ingredients into a bowl and whisk until all mixed together.
- Cut out a piece of baking paper to line the inside and the bottom of tincan.
- Spoon the cake mixture into the tincan.
- Bake for 25-30 minutes at 160oC fan or 175oC electric oven.
- Allow to cool completely in the tincan. Then carefully remove from the tin, take off the baking paper.
- Trim off the top to make the cake even and slice the cake 3 times.
- Spread a thin layer of chocolate spread in between 2 layers. Then cover the whole cake with a thin layer of swiss vanilla frosting. Place in the fridge and allow the frosting to harden.
Let’s decorate:
- Divide the frosting into 5 bowls. Place a little bit of gel colouring into each bowl, mix and then fill a piping bag with each different colour.
- Cut of the top of the piping bag and put a blob of each coloured icing down along the cake.
- Dip the knife into the hot water and pull it through the icing at the top. Wipe the knife in a napkin, dip in the hot water and pull it through the next coloured icing. Rotate the colouring and continue piping around the whole cake until completely covered to make a rainbow.
Tips
- The best tin to use for baking the cake is on that you have to use a tin opener to open it.
- If you have a tin with a pull ring, simply turn it upside down and open the bottom (now top) with a tin opener. The reason is because the pull rings when opened have a small lip on the inside which makes it very difficult to take the cake out without it breaking.
- It’s easier to decorate the cake if you make it the day before as the sponge isn’t too soft
