I’m pretty light on Christmas do’s this year what with trying to stay away from people in general at the mo because they are all sick and infected with illnesses I don’t want, but on Friday night i had my Christmas get together with some of my favourite ladies. I’ve not baked anything in ages so i said I’d take a cake along and as traditional fruit cakes are revolting (and take about 6 weeks to make) I went with something I’ve been spying on Pinterest and Instagram for, well, forever – the drip cake. See, I eventually jump on bandwagons. I mean, I even bought some rose gold shoes in the summer!
I mostly made it because I am a bit obsessed with making meringue kisses at the moment. They are so cute and so easy to do but look awesome and I saw so many cakes with them on on Pinterest I knew I had to do the same!
But because I spent too much time on Pinterest looking at drippy cakes I also discovered watercolour frosting and well, not content with trying just one new thing I thought I’d try that too! I think what might have made it easier would have been having a proper cake edge scraper rather than a flat knife as it wasn’t the smoothest icing in the world, but if I’m honest I thought most of it would be covered with ganache anyway!
I wasn’t going to blog it because it wasn’t pinterest perfect but I figured if I waited for my life to be pinterest perfect nothing would ever happen and I’d never write a blog post again – plus you know, I like to think the imperfections make it a bit more accessible. Right? Please say they do!
I wasn’t going to blog it because it wasn’t pinterest perfect but I figured if I waited for my life to be pinterest perfect nothing would ever happen and I’d never write a blog post again – plus you know, I like to think the imperfections make it a bit more accessible. Right? Please say they do!
Meringue Kisses
What you’ll need;
- 3 large egg whites
- 150g cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 teaspoon white wine vinegar
- food colouring for the stripes
- piping bag
What you need to do;
- Heat oven to 95 degrees C and line bake sheet with parchment paper.
- Put the egg whites in mixing bowl. Make sure the bowl doesn’t have any residue grease in it or the meringues won’t work!) and whip until they form stiff peaks (I use a kitchenaid stand mixer with a balloon whisk on it)
- You know the eggs are done when you can hold the bowl upside down doesn’t fall on your head.
- Slowly add in sugar, the vanilla and vinegar. Increase the speed of your mixer (I was at 7-8 at this stage) and whip until the mixture is glossy, and hold its peaks. You shouldn’t be able to feel any sugar grit if you rub it between your fingers!
- Turn a piping bag inside out and draw stripes of your food colouring on it. Then turn it the right way round, fit your piping bag tip and fill with the meringue mixture.
- Pipe out little kisses until you fill the sheet.
- Bake for about 90minutes until they peel away from the paper easily. They’ll still be a bit chewy at this stage. cook for longer iof you don’t want them chewy.
- Leave to cool and store in an air tight container if not using immediately.
3 Layer Cake
What you’ll need;
- 375g soft butter
- 375g sugar
- 6 large eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla essence
- 375g self-raising flour
- 2-3 tbsp milk
- Red food colouring
What you need to do;
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C and grease and line three 7in cake tins with baking paper.
- Mix the butter and sugar together in a bowl until they are pale and fluffy.
- Add in the eggs gradually and then mix in the vanilla essence. (If you want to make your own vanilla I have a recipe for it here!)
- Gently beat in the flour (I went down to speed 1 on the mixer and still ended up with a mushroom cloud of flower everywhere) and pour in a little milk if you think it looks like it needs it.
- Spoon out 5 tablespoons of cake mix into a small bowl and colour red it red. I used Wilton’s ‘Christmas Red’ gel for all my red colouring needs!
- Divide the rest of the cake batter between the 3 cake tins and level out.
- Spoon the red mixture equally into the 3 cake and use a tooth pick to swirl it through the cake (this way when you cut it open it’ll be marbled red)
- Bake for 20-25 minutes and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
- Leave to cool fully before decorating
Buttercream Frosting
What you’ll need;
- upto 500g icing sugar
- 225g soft butter
- 2 teaspoons vanilla essence
- 3 tablespoons cream.
What you need to do;
- Put your soft butter to your mixer bowl and mix the butter on a low to medium speed (I use 5 on the kitchen aid) until it’s smooth
- Add your icing sugar to the butter gently. (If you do it too fast you’ll end up with another mushroom cloud of white and your kitchen will start to resemble a coke den!) Keep adding the icing sugar until it’s all mixed in.
- Add the vanilla essence and mix until well combined.
- Slowly pour the cream into the frosting until you’re happy with the consistancy. More cream = softer frosting. Obvz!
- Half the frosting now – half for filling the cake. Half for covering. Take a couple of spoons of the covering frosting and add to a smaller bowl and mix with food colouring of your choice if you want to try watercolouring.
For the Ganache
What you’ll need;
- 200g white chocolate
- 100ml cream
- Red food colouring
What you need to do;
- Heat the cream in a jug in the microwave or in a small pan on the hob
- When it’s hot but not boiling mix in the white chocolate and stir until it’s all melted.
- Add your food colouring – be careful with some colours though as white chocolate isn’t exactly white so might make some colours look strange!
How to assemble your cake;
- Place your cake on your cake board/cake stand and secure with a little frosting.
- Fill and stack the cake with your filling frosting.
- Cover your cake with the remaining frosting and smooth out as much as you can.
- Once you are nearly done smoothing out the cake, randomly swipe on the coloured frosting, red in my case. Work round the cake, smoothing out the coloured frosting and integrating the coloured frosting in to the white, but not blending it in fully.
- Put the cake in the fridge and make your ganache. The ganache dripping works better if the cake is cold as it stops the drips from melting the frosting or running too much! The ganache also wants to be about room temperature rather than being too hot!
- Drip the ganache round the top edge of the cake with a small spoon – slowly. Doing it slowly and with a spoon allows you to control down much of a drip you get, you can always add more if you want longer drips.
- Spoon the rest of the ganache into the middle of the cake and smooth it out. If the ganache isn’t smoothing because it’s cooled, head the back of a spoon and use that to help melt it.
- Decorate with your meringue kisses, festive sprinkles, candy canes, snow like glitter. The works! Go mad! Do.
Tell me, do we think it’s festive enough?