Are you looking for an elegant and exquisite dessert? Then this dessert is undoubtedly the one to try out!
I made this dessert on a random Friday evening and it certainly set my weekend off to a dazzling start. It looks sophisticated but is ridiculously easy to make!It is one one of those really filling individual desserts by virtue of the size, so I do advise that you only have a light meal before the dessert.
Like all my recipes, you may half the quantities or double them depending on your desired yield, just bearing in mind to do so with all the ingredients.
Time: 1hour 45 minutes
Yield: 5 desserts
Ingredients
For the mini cakes:
- 6 cups cake flour
- 3 ¼ tablespoons baking powder
- 3 ½ cups sugar
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 4 tsp vanilla extract
- 3 cups vegetable oil
- 3 ¼ cups milk
- 6 eggs
- 2-3 drops purple food coloring (or any colour of your choice) For the caramel brittle
- ¾ cup sugar
For the frosting(icing)
- ¾ cup cocoa powder
- 2 ¼ cups icing sugar
- 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
- 5 tablespoons milk
- ⅝ cup softened butter/margarine
- 2 ¼ tsp vanilla extract
- Red food colouring
- Black food coloring
For the middle
- 3 cups fresh cream/heavy cream
- 3 tablespoons icing sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the plate decoration
- 6 tablespoons chocolate sauce
- 4 tablespoons milk
- ½ cup icing sugar
- A few drops of maroon food coloring
INSTRUCTIONS
- Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius.
- Line five 5x16 cm circular baking tins with parchment paper.
- In a large bowl combine all the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder and salt).
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, crack all the eggs and beat them on medium-high speed for about 2 minutes.
- Gradually add in the milk, oil and vanilla extract and increase the speed of the mixer slightly for the next 3 minutes.
- Reduce the speed of the mixer and gradually add in the dry ingredients.
- After that, add in a few drops of the purple food colouring and whisk the cake batter for 2 more minutes.
- Equally distribute the cake batter among the 5 baking tins.(You may place ½ a cup of cake batter in each baking tin and repeat that till you no longer have any remaining).
- Bake for 45-50 minutes or till a wooden skewer comes out clean when inserted.
- In the meantime, to make the frosting for the middle, place the heavy/fresh cream in a medium sized bowl and whip it on medium speed until stiff peaks form (when you lift the mixer nothing falls).
- Fold the icing sugar and vanilla extract into the whipped cream and place the bowl in the fridge it is needed.
- To make the buttercream frosting, place the softened butter in a bowl and beat it for 3 minutes with your mixer on medium speed.
- Start adding the icing sugar ½ cup at a time.
- Add in the milk and whisk for 2 more minutes and stop the mixer.
- Fold the cocoa powder into the frosting.
- Remove ⅜ of the frosting from the bowl and place it in a small bowl.
- Also remove ¾ cup of the frosting and place it in another small bowl. Add a few drops of the red food colouring to the frosting.
- With the icing remaining in the bowl, add one drop of red food coloring and one drop of black. Repeat this step. It should produce a dark violet color.
- Put the icing bowls aside.
- When the time for the cakes is up, remove them from the oven and let them cool for 10 minutes before removing them from the pans.
- To remove them from the tins, run a dinner knife around the sides of the baking tins and gently invert the tins.
- Gently peel off the parchment paper at the bottom of each cake.
- Place the cakes on a cutting board and let them cool for 25 minutes.
- While they cool, to prepare the caramel brittle, first line a baking tray with parchment paper.
- Place the sugar in a saucepan.
- Start stirring the sugar over medium-high heat.(It might take about 5 minutes for the sugar to eventually start melting.)
- When it does start melting, continue stirring till it has completely melted.
- Once it starts boiling, remove it from the stove and pour the sugar onto the baking tray you lined with parchment paper.
- Let it set, but just before it has completely set, get a sharp knife and cut about 15 pieces(they don’t need to all be the same shape).
- Leave the hot caramel to harden completely and after 5 minutes, the pieces should easily come off the baking tray because of the parchment paper beneath.
- To frost the mini cakes, place them each on the serving plates.
- If the cake tops are uneven (dome-shaped), simply use a serrated knife(bread knife) to thinly slice off the uneven tops.
- Invert the cakes, so the bottom becomes the top.
- Slice each of the cakes in half. For them to be evenly sliced, place each plate (with the cake) on a cake turntable and turn it whilst slicing the middle, working from the sides and gently into the middle.
- When you have done that for all of them, place the top halves aside and place the whipped cream in a piping bag with a star nozzle.
- Pipe the top of the bottom halves and leave some of the whipped cream for the outer middle layer.
- Place the top halves on top of the frosted layer.
- Pipe around the middle of the cakes( between the top and bottom layer).
- Evenly distribute the remaining whipped cream and use a spatula to spread the frosting on the top layers.
- Use a paper towel to remove any cake crumbs on the plate before icing.
- Add the red icing to the piping bag and pipe around the bottom of each cake.
- Add the violet icing and pipe a border of roses on the top of each layer.
- Add about 3 pieces of the caramel brittle to the top of each cake, making sure they don’t fall.
Finally to decorate the plate, mix the icing sugar, milk, chocolate sauce and a few drops of maroon food coloring and pipe the decorations of your choice!