Christmas Hot Chocolate Cake

The festive season is the perfect time to try out a new recipe, and enjoy time with the family while you bake a delicious cake to eat whilst watching your favourite Christmas film.

We’ve teamed up with previous Junior Bake Off winner, Finley Woodward, to create the ideal Christmas cake recipe for you to try at home this year.

For the cake:

In a small saucepan, melt the butter and add the muscovado sugar and the treacle. Keep stirring this until it has all melted and there are no more lumps of sugar that have not been dissolved. Next, in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix together the flour, ground ginger and bicarb.

Pour in the butter mixture into the flour and mix it until it looks shiny and resembles choux pastry. Then add the eggs and beat it until it is all incorporated. Add the stem ginger and milk and beat on a high speed until it has all mixed in and it is one colour

Next, grease three 6inch pans with butter and a circle of parchment paper at the base. Evenly poor the batter into the tins and bake them in a preheated oven that is at 170c fan for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

For the ganache:

Add the cream to a bowl and add the chopped chocolate. Microwave this for 45 second intervals until the chocolate has melted. The ganache should be thick and shiny. Then place this into the fridge to cool it down. It will set very firm but if it is too firm microwave it for 15 second intervals until it is a workable consistency.

For the buttercream:

Whisk the butter on a high speed until it changes pale in colour. Add the icing sugar and milk and whisk it of 5 minutes until it is not grainy. My stand mixer made very easy work of this! Then, add half of the cooled ganache and whisk on a high speed.

Time to bring it all together:

Add some butter cream onto a cake board, (if you do not have a cake board you can just use a normal plate and decorate the cake on that) this is to stick the cake to the board. Next, add the first cake and spread some buttercream onto it then add the next layer and carry on stacking your layers.

When the cakes are staked it is time for the crumb coat, this is just a thin layer of buttercream. add the buttercream all around the cake and use a cake scraper to scrape almost all of it off, this will just leave a thin layer of buttercream. then place in the freezer to set the buttercream. When the buttercream has set, add another coat of buttercream and smooth it out, place this back into the freezer. Then, knead the brown fondant and roll it very thin, then take the cake out of the freezer and place the brown fondant on top and use a knife to get rid of the excess.

Roll out the blue fondant into a rectangle that is big enough to wrap it around the sides of the cake. Then carefully pick up the fondant and security to the sides of the cake. To make the cup handle, add some tylos powder to the remaining blue fondant (this is so it will set hard) then roll it into a sausage and press it down so it is 3cm deep. Next, shape it into a handle shape and add some wires to is so it can be added into the cake without falling off, then leave it to one side to set.

Roll out some green fondant thin and use a holly cutter to cut out 12 larger leaves and 12 smaller laves. Use a small amount of water to stick them to the cake in pairs, then use some red fondant for the berries and again use a small amount of water to stick them to the cake. Then, roll out some dark blue fondant in to a long strip and cover the cake board in the fondant. Add some marshmallows to the top of the cake using the ganache as a glue and then drizzle the ganache over the marshmallow.

If the handle is set, push it into the side of the cake and use some water as a glue. You could leave the cake like this or you could add some edible figures like I have, but this is optional. This is the finished cake and I am extremely happy with how this has turned out, now all that is left to do is cut a slice and enjoy all of your hard work!

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