Chocoholic Wedding cake

by Ange Marsden
(Tauranga)

I made this cake for a 50th birthday but it would make a great wedding cake for a chocoholic bride. This is a double recipe chocolate cake made the night before, cut in half and sprinkled with an aged port and sandwiched together to "age" overnight in the fridge.

The next day I sandwiched the two halves together with Morello Cherry Jam and a little more port to make the jam runny and buttercream icing with cocoa in it.

The whole cake was covered in a layer of butter cream icing then one and a half packets of chocolate finger biscuits were put around the side of the cake. Ideally, they should be about half a centermetre higher than the top of the cake so you can pour one packet of scorched almonds and chocolate raisins onto the top of the cake.

I also piped buttercream swirls on the top to anchor some fresh cherries and the toffee sticks into.

To make the toffee sticks you need a small saucepan wiht a half a centermetre layer of caster sugar in it and fill the pan with water so it just barley covers the sugar.

Put on the stove on a high heat and don't touch or stir it! Leave until the mixture bubbles and the sugar dissolves. You'll see a patch of the sugar in the middle of the pan turn pale brown and spread across the pan, as soon as it covers half the pan pull it off the stove and stir the HOT toffee.

The toffee keeps cooking after you take it off the stove so you need to remove it while still pale brown.

By covering your cold, stainless steel kitchen bench in a layer of cooking oil you can drop a spoonful of the toffee on the bench and make a long squigly line of toffee. Once it sets you should be able to pick up the sticks and place them on the cake for height.

It's worth a play around because it's not as hard as it sounds!

You can also add food colouring to the water before you add it to the sugar but it's harder to see when the mixture turns to toffee - test by dropping some on a cold bench to see if it sets.