FIERY GINGERBREAD AND CARAMEL WHITE CHOCOLATE LAYER CAKE
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EQUIPMENT:
Oven set to 170c
2 x 18cm Cake Tins
INGREDIENTS:
Gingerbread Sponge
90g Butter (I browned mine but you can simply melt yours, if preferred)
125g Golden Syrup
100g Light Brown Sugar (You can use Caster/white if you don’t want to £££, no drama)
150ml Milk (oh any variety or fat content of choosing)
1 Medium Egg
180g Plain Flour (Why not try with 20% wholemeal flour if you’re health conscious? It won’t affect the overall bake or texture quality, because look how low the ratio of flour is to the rest of the ingredients here… and hey it will add an extra nutty taste)
1 Tbsp Ground Ginger (wow that’s a lot of ginger. Oh wait…looks at name of cake)
1 Tsp Ground Cinnamon (this makes the ginger less aggressive and ‘in your face’ but still very dominant)
5g Baking Powder
Pinch of Salt
Caramel and White Chocolate Cream
180g White Chocolate (good quality, that you would eat and not feel the sugar/badness burn the back of your throat if you ate a lot)
120g Caster Sugar
Pinch of Salt
65g Butter (Unsalted, obviously)
450ml Double Cream
METHOD:
For the Gingerbread Sponge….
Grease and line your cake tins, preheat your oven.
Heat the butter in a pan (either to melt or all the way to brown butter, buyers choice), add the golden syrup, sugar and milk and mix to combine. Off the heat, add the egg, mix and set aside.
Weigh the dry ingredients together then gradually whisk in by hand until everything is combined.
Divide the mixture between the two tins and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden and risen. Leave to completely in the tins before removing and cutting in half horizontally.
For the crumble topping….
When cutting the sponges, level the top of each sponge. Crumble these trimmings and return to the oven for a further 10- 15 minutes. Once cooled, crumble up into a nice chunky crumble and set aside.
For the Caramel and White Chocolate Cream….
Chop the white chocolate coarsely (which basically means it doesn’t matter if it’s too small or uniform, just enough to show yourself you tried) and decant into a large bowl (preferably not plastic as the hot caramel is due to join soon).
In a pan, heat the butter and double cream on a low heat (enough to melt the butter and keep the liquid warm).
Weigh your sugar and add about 1/4 to a separate pan over a medium-high heat. Heat the sugar until starts to colour, ensuring the sugar is distributed evenly across the pan.
‘Shower’ more sugar - an even sprinkle (and not a down pour) over the sugar and continue to cook. Continue until all the sugar is used up and the caramel is now an nice dark brown colour (if you dare, you can always stop when it’s lighter).
Once you’re happy with your caramel colour (I’m sorry, but please don’t happy with the colour black in this instance, no good) gradually add the warm cream/butter mixture and whisk everything until smooth.
Pour over the white chocolate and mix until all the chocolate has melted. Chill in the fridge for a few hours before whipping up and using to fill the cake.
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