Recipe for black magic number cake
It’s quite obvious to bake a number cake when there’s a birthday to celebrate! Last year, I baked a rather whimsically decorated number cake for my daughter’s 2nd birthday, and that cake brought quite a few smiles to the faces of both children and adults 🙂
Inspired by the Black Magic cake, I decided to bake another number cake for my daughter this year for her 3rd birthday.
– and it turned out to be one of the most festive cakes I’ve made in a long time. Decorated with both chocolate ganache, Toffifee, fresh strawberries, and fresh blueberries sprayed with gold… Oh, you should have seen my daughter’s eyes! They were about as big as the Toffifee chocolates I had decorated the cake with, and she could hardly believe that this cake – it was hers.
The cake base was made from a delicious, moist chocolate cake inspired by this recipe.
Read along here and see how I did it.
Ingredients
Chocolate Ganache
- 900 gram Dark chocolate
- 650 gram Whipping Cream
Chocolate Cake
- 500 gram Butter
- 300 gram Chocolate
- 8 Egg
- 500 gram Sugar
- 300 gram Wheat Flour
- 100 gram Cocoa powder
- 4 gram Sea Salt
Garnish
- Toffee
- Blueberry fresh
- Strawberry fresh
- Gold Dust I used edible gold spray
Instructions
Chocolate cake
- The number cake consists of two simple chocolate cakes, each baked in a 24 cm springform with a 5 cm cutter in the middle. I baked mine separately on two occasions.
- Finely chop the chocolate on a cutting board.
- Find a saucepan.
- Put the chopped chocolate and butter into the saucepan.
- Melt while stirring until no lumps remain.
- Let it cool slightly.
- Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 170 degrees Celsius (338 degrees Fahrenheit) (conventional) and find a bowl.
- Break the eggs into the bowl and add sugar.
- Whisk until fluffy with an electric mixer.
- Sift the flour and cocoa powder into the bowl with the egg mixture.
- Add salt.
- Gently fold together until the batter is completely homogeneous.
- Now fold the cooled, melted chocolate mixture into the bowl with the batter.
- Find your springform.
- Line the springform with baking paper and place the cutter in the center.
- Pour half of the batter into the springform.
- Place the pan on the lowest rack in the preheated oven.
- Bake the cake for 30 to 35 minutes.
- Remove the baked cake from the oven.
- Let it cool before removing it from the pan.
- Remove the cake and set the finished cake aside.
- Now line the springform again with a new piece of baking paper.
- Pour the remaining batter into the springform.
- Place it on the lowest rack in the oven and bake it similarly for 30 to 35 minutes.
- Remove the baked cake from the oven and let it cool before removing the springform.
Assembling the number cake
- Now the two cakes shall become a number 3! And it's no big science.
- First, take one cake and cut it in half.
We will only use one half for our number 3. - Now take the other cake and cut 1/4 off, as shown in the picture below:Of course, it would be a shame to let the cake scraps go to waste, so you can, for example, use the leftovers to make my chocolate roulade or rum balls (recipes here and here).
- Find a cake platter of an appropriate size.
- Now place the cake pieces so they form the number 3.
- First, take one cake and cut it in half.
- Find a bowl, a cutting board, and a knife.
- Finely chop the dark chocolate and put it in the bowl.
- Find a saucepan and a whisk.
- Pour the cream into the saucepan.
- Heat the cream until it just begins to boil.
- Now pour the boiling cream into the bowl with the finely chopped dark chocolate, whisking constantly.
- Let the ganache cool to room temperature.
- Find an electric mixer.
- Now whip the dark chocolate ganache until fluffy, being careful not to over-whip - it can split!
- Now find two piping bags and two different nozzles.
- Divide the fluffy chocolate ganache between the two piping bags.
We will only use one half for our number 3.
Decorating the number cake
- Now it's time to be really creative! You can, of course, choose to let your imagination run wild with a completely different pattern than mine. For example, you could use one nozzle along the edge of the cake and then fill the gap with the other nozzle. The possibilities are endless! Here's what I did:
- First, pipe with one nozzle, making small "dots" all over the cake with gaps in between, so there is space to pipe with the other nozzle afterwards.
- Repeat with the other nozzle until the cake is filled and beautifully decorated.
- Wash the fresh strawberries and remove the stems.
- Quarter the strawberries and place them randomly on top of the cake.
- Also place the Toffifee chocolates randomly on the cake.
- Wash the blueberries, pat them dry, and spray them with gold spray.
- Finally, place the blueberries wherever there is still space on the cake.
- Optionally, place some flags on the platter around the cake.
- Serve and surprise your birthday guests with your beautiful number cake!
