S’mores cake

Get ready to see a picture of the BEST cake I have ever made.

I know this one comes with a big tag line, but I really do believe this could be the greatest cake I’ve ever baked. I think I find this cake so perfect because of its array of textures and flavours – layers of crunchy digestive biscuit, chewy marshmallows, silky vanilla buttercream and rich, moist, chocolate sponge… maybe it’s because I’m a HUGE chocaholic… or maybe it’s just because I’ve always underestimated the chocolate sponge-vanilla buttercream combination.. who knows! 

Either way I find this the cake is impeccably balanced. And when cake and s’mores are combined, you know something good is about to happen. I hope you enjoy baking this cake, and find it as wonderful as I did!

The cake I made consisted of 4 sponge layers, but I have written the following recipe as a (less excessive) 2-sponge cake, as any normal cake would be baked! But do feel free to double up the recipe and go all out to make a showstopper!

Happy Baking! Sofia x

Ingredients: The ingredients below are given in cups as I didn’t weigh them into grams when I baked this cake (sorry!), but I will be updating the recipe in due course if you don’t like using cup measurements 🙂

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups sugar
• ¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1½ teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon instant coffee
• 1 cup milk
• ½ cup vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste/ extract
• 1 cup boiling water
• 600 icing sugar, sifted
• 300g butter, softened
• 2 tsbp. milk
• 1 tsp.vanilla paste
• 5 digestive biscuits
• 1 bag of marshmallows
• chocolate and optional extras to decorate

Method:

1. Pre heat your oven to 180°C, and grease two 8 or 9″ baking tins with butter.
2. Place the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa and salt into a large mixing bowl. Whisk to produce a uniform mix.
3.  Add your eggs, oil, milk and vanilla to the dry ingredients and whisk well to combine.
4. Finally, to one cup of boiling water, add the instant coffee and stir. Pour slowly into your mixing bowl and whisk to produce a thin chocolate batter mixture – the secret to this super moist cake!
5. Pour evenly into your cake tins and bake in the oven for roughly 30mins, until the cakes are springy to the touch!
6. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.
7. Whilst your cakes cool, chop a handful of your marshmallows into small bite sized pieces, reserving the rest for decoration. Also, crush your digestive biscuits into small crumbs using a rolling-pin.
8. Next, make the buttercream – Place your softened butter into a large bowl or into a free-standing mixer. Beat using a k-hook or use a handheld electric whisk. Sift half of the icing sugar into the butter, and whisk until combined. Add a tbsp. of milk, followed by the vanilla and whisk again. Sift in the remaining icing sugar and beat again. The buttercream should be silky and smooth – if yours feels too firm to spread, add some more milk 1 tbsp. at a time, until the consistency is correct.
9. Finally fill and decorate your cake! Place one chocolate sponge in the middle of your plate or cake stand. Spread 1/4 of the butter on top of the cake. Sprinkle a 3/4 of the biscuit crumbs on top of the buttercream, followed by all of the marshmallow pieces, your cake will look extremley full and indulgent, yum.
10. Place your other sponge on top of the cake and spread 1/3 of the remaining buttercream on top.
11. With the buttercream that’s left, spread it evenly and gently around the perimeter of the cake, using an off-set palette knife. Spread until all of the chocolate cake is covered – I kept an inch of the top of my cake exposed  because I liked the way it looked, but feel free to design your cake in your own style 🙂
12. Lastly, decorate your cake with marshmallows, biscuit crumbs and melted chocolate!
13. With my left over melted chocolate, I spread little lines onto the cake, and then with a cake scraper I geniality dragged the chocolate covered buttercream along the outside of the cake to create those ombre-chocolate tones ❤

Enjoy! Sofia xxx

• Notes – the chocolate sponge recipe is from the amazing Add a Pinch blog, and its the only one I ever use 🙂