Saturday, November 26, 2011

another volcano cake that almost worked

For some reason, it's been a year for volcano cakes in our house. Here's another volcano cake we made that almost worked - and it would have worked perfectly if I read the recipe more carefully! :) It was very easy, and the yummiest birthday cake we've ever made, by a lo-o-o-ong way. This one was for Ben's 11th birthday, and Lizzy helped me make it.

You start with a round chocolate cake (ours is a double gluten free cake from a packet)and 4 litres of ice cream softened a little (about 10 minutes) then shoved into a metal mould - this shape is great if you can get it. Put it in the freezer overnight.Turn the ice cream out on top of the cake (our ice cream is butterscotch mixed with good quality vanilla).Beat 600 ml cream with 1/4 cup cocoa and 2 tbsn icing sugar until it's thick, and spread it over the cake.Chop up lots of chocolate bars (the yummiest is Snickers, but include some Cherry Ripe, Crunchies, Toblerone and anything else you like). This is where we went wrong. I misread the recipe and bought about 400g of mixed chocolate bars instead of (believe it or not) 200g chocolate bars and 1 1/2 kg Rocky Road.Here's our volcano - as you can see, there weren't quite enough chocolate bars to cover it! But it looks good all the same. (You're supposed to pour thick strawberry topping over it, do some complicated thing with sheets of homemade toffee, and put dinosaurs and dessicated coconut mixed with green food colouring around the edge. I got a little lazy here! ;) )Put it back in the freezer to harden up for a few hours (the cream is YUMMY after you've done this). Get it out, stick some sparklers in, light them,
wait for them to go out,then watch it disappear.YUM!

This cake is adapted from the "Volcano Vibes" cake in The Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book.

6 comments:

Lucy said...

Just wanted to say how much I enjoy reading about what another gf family does for birthday cakes etc. This one looks really good and we're entering birthday season in our family... might give it a try!

Jean said...

:) Tell me how it goes, Lucy! Maybe you can get yours to look a little more realistic than ours...Send me a photo and I'll post it!

Sarah said...

Oh my goodness, that looks so good. I wish I could eat it! :)

Jean said...

Well, it was very good! :) You can make an "adult" version of this cake by mixing chopped-up chocolate bars into slightly softened ice cream, moulding and freezing it and sprinking chocolate shavings on top: yum! My daughter had this for her 13th birthday this year...I'd better dig out some photos...

Jean said...

Although not quite so yummy because it's missing the frozen chocolate cream - I guess you could add that as icing! Now there's overkill.

charissa said...

We've done this cake too and it is very yummy. But we had lots of left overs and it was a bit hard to keep!!