Recipe: Chocolate salted caramel marble cake

Recipe: Chocolate salted caramel marble cake
Source: Heat (Issue 776, 5^th–11^th April 2014)

Growing up, a feature of Easter day in our family was always my Mum’s Springtime marble cake. This was a marble effect ring-shaped cake that was coated in chocolate icing, and filled in the centre with mini chocolate eggs, giving the impression of a nest. It’s been a few years since we’ve had this, now, so when I stumbled across this recipe in Heat magazine (of all places!) on a Stork promotional page, I just had to make it our Easter dessert this year.

The Chocolate salted caramel marble cake was always going to be a richer option than my Mum’s more traditional recipe. The white part of the sponge contained white chocolate rather than being plain, it had an inner salted caramel sauce, and it was topped with truffles. I couldn’t wait to ‘make this Easter marble-ous’ (Stork’s words, not mine!).

 

Although I followed the recipe printed in my magazine, a version of it can also be found on Stork's website where there is also a useful video (I did watch this prior to baking but not immediately before so I may well have done things differently!).

 

The only change I made to the recipe was using two types of caster sugar. About half of the quantity I used was the normal kind but I did mix golden caster sugar in to make up the amount as that’s what we had in stock.

 

The recipe for the cake itself was very easy – so much so that there’s nothing to really say about it! I followed all the instructions in the magazine and ended up with a decent cake. It did take five minutes longer to bake than had been suggested but that was the only issue at this stage. Once cooled, I did get someone else to slice the cake in two – I struggle to even cut a loaf of bread so I didn’t want to ruin my creation!

At the final stages of assembly, things did start to go a little wrong. When I added the inner caramel layer, it began too ooze out of the sides which made me nervous of adding too much. As a result, I think I used less than the recommended half of the mixture. This had implications on the truffles since the recipe said to make them from the left over ganache and caramel (the video on the website didn’t mention using the caramel in the truffles but this was part of the cake’s novelty for me so I just had to!). Since the caramel was runnier than the ganache and there was more of it, I didn’t want to mix everything in together and end up with a liquid mess that I couldn’t use. Instead, I tried chilling a teaspoon of the chocolate mixed with a teaspoon of the caramel and seeing how it worked...it didn’t!

By this stage, it was late on Saturday night and I needed the cake to be sorted ready for the next day (Easter!) so I didn’t have time to be patient. I’d left the separate bowls of ganache and caramel to chill so they were relatively firm so I decided to just go for it. I made a ball shape with the chocolate, drizzled some caramel over the top, rubbed the ball a bit more, and then plunged it into cocoa powder as I kept rolling the truffle. This was extremely messy as the mixtures were too soft, really, to be working with, but I did manage to get some kind of truffles out of the process. Ok, they looked a mess as they were squidgy rather than round (my family decided they looked like boulders!) but by the time they’d chilled in the fridge overnight, they were the perfect consistency! If I’d had the time to deal with them on Easter morning, I would have made them then instead, but that just wasn’t an option for me, unfortunately.

The main thing was that everyone absolutely loved the cake. I was told it was ‘a bit special’ and it was well received by all. Despite containing a lot of chocolate (particularly dark), it wasn’t too heavy, and the balance with the salted caramel was spot on. I always use my three year-old nephew as an indicator of the overall verdict and he ate the whole of his slice without problem...and this was straight after our roast lamb dinner!

The good thing about my caramel filling going, perhaps, a little wrong, was that I had a jug of the sauce left over which we could then pour over the top of the cake. This worked really well and, again, lifted the flavour to prevent it being too dominated by chocolate.

 

It may have looked a bit of a mess but this was a big hit and I’ve even been asked for the recipe. I’d definitely be happy to give it another go when I have a bit more time on my hands!

 

Ease of recipe: 9/10
Finished product: 8.5/10
Overall score: 8.75/10
Bake again? Yes