Ice cream cone birthday cake

Serves:

Ingredients

• 3 chocolate mud cakes, each 15cm across (see below)
• 1 quantity chocolate ganache (see below)
• 1 quantity buttercream icing (see below)

Decorations

• 5-6 traditional wafer ice cream cones, approximately 12.5cm long (more maybe required, depending on breakages!)
• Ribbon
• 2 litres of assorted ice creams

Mud cake

• 270g dark chocolate, chopped
• Meadow Lea or 175g butter, chopped
• 3 tsp instant coffee granules
• half a cup water
• half a cup brown sugar
• half a cup plain flour
• half a cup self raising flour
• 1 egg
• half a cup coffee liqueur (I used Kahlua)

Chocolate ganache

• 300g dark chocolate
• 100ml cream

Buttercream icing

• 200g unsalted butter, softened
• half a  cup full cream milk
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 8 cups sifted icing sugar
• 1 cup cocoa

Method

Mud cake

Preheat oven 160C and line tin with baking paper.

In a saucepan, place chocolate, butter, coffee, water and sugar and stir over low heat until chocolate has melted and sugar melted. Cool for 15 mins.

Stir sifted flours, eggs and liqueur into chocolate mixture and pour into tin.

Bake for 1 hour and test with a skewer.

Cool cake in tin.

Repeat for two more cakes.

Ganache

Place cream in a saucepan and bring to boil.

Place chopped chocolate into a bowl. Pour heated cream over chocolate and allow to stand for 2-3 mins.

Stir cream and chocolate until smooth.

Cool to room temperature.

Icing

Cream butter for 1-2 minutes. Add the milk, vanilla and half of the icing sugar.Beat for approximately 3 minutes. Add the remaining icing sugar and beat for another 3 minutes. The icing is ready to use immediately.

Decorating

Level each cake with a knife. Stack the cakes on top of each other, filling between the layers with the ganache.

Before icing the cake, prepare the ice cream cones as these will need to put on while the icing is still wet. Halve each ice cream cone by placing the cone with the flat wide end up on the cutting board. Use a steak knife and cut down the cone with a gentle sawing action. (You may break a few, but keep at it!)

Spread the buttercream icing on the cake and place the half cones around the outside of the cake.

Tie a ribbon around the cake and set aside.

Scoop approximately 20 scoops of ice cream and place on baking trays. Put into freezer until required. (This will also harden the ice cream, making it easier to handle when transferring onto the cake.)

Just before serving place the scoops of ice cream on top of the cake.Start with the outside and work toward the centre making a layer of ice cream scoops on top of the cake. Pile remaining ice cream scoops on top of this layer to form a pyramid of scoops. Serve immediately.

Notes:

• For an adults cake, you can use better quality ice cream for a more wicked taste!
• Mud cake works best as it is dense enough to carry the weight of the ice cream. The ice cream is also a lovely accompaniment to the richness of the mud cake.
• For a smaller cake, use shorter ice cream cones.
• The ice cream scoops are quite easy to position on top of the cake (just about anything will look good) so don’t be nervous about having to do the final decorating just before serving.
• This recipe was created by Katherine Petric for Kidspot, New Zealand’s best recipe finder.

Serving Suggestions

Note