Squared Cake Recipe
I've been inundated with requests for the recipe to the Squared Cake. Actually that's a blatant lie, I haven't received a single one, but I thought that writing it up would be a good way to keep on revelling in my bakery-inspired bigheadedness for a while. Besides, I think that having some sort of easily available recipe library (now two in total) will be useful in case I ever have to bake something in an emergency. It might yet happen.
Credit goes to Carol Vorderman off How 2 for inspiring this cake, for which I saw the theory about ten years ago but never got around to actually putting into practice until last week. That's where the idea came from - the actual procedure I just made up as we went along. It should make a reasonably large cake that should serve eight to ten people... I don't know, look at the entry below to get an idea of the size.
~ Squared Cake ~
Stuff Needed
6 eggs
Castor sugar
Self-raising flour
A conversion table, probably
Chocolate powder
Icing sugar
About two hours for the manufacture (much less if using two cake pans)
A spare night to let it solidify
The oven preheated to 190°C
An appointment at the dentist
Sponges
- Ideally, you should have two eight or nine-inch cake pans so that you can do both the sponges at the same time, but we used just one. Grease and flour one, grease and chocolate powder the other.
- For the plain layer, beat three of the eggs, 1/2 cup of castor sugar and 3/4 of a cup of self-raising flour in a bowl, then pour into the plain pan.
- Do the same for the chocolate sponge, replacing about half the flour with chocolate powder.
- Bake both of these for about twenty minutes - test them with a cake tester (or, if you're as ill-equipped as us, just use a knife).
- Leave the cakes upside-down to cool and solidify a bit for half an hour. The reason to leave them upside down is to try and let them settle into a reasonably flat shape, as you'll be stacking them - it's up to you to decide whether this actually helps.
- Here's the interesting bit. Using a bowl or a plate or something as a template, cut a circle into the centre of each sponge. The aim is to leave an outer circle of about the same width as the height of the sponge. It doesn't matter if it's a bit off, but be careful that you keep the knife reasonably upright and don't tear the rest of the cake too much with it. The best way to cut it cleanly is to use a small knife, stick it in the cake, then induce a muscle spasm in your hand to rapidly twitch it up and down as you cut round. Remove the template and run the knife around the trench to free it of the outer circle.
- Once that circle's done, do the same again with a mug in the centre of the smaller circle that you've just cut. Try and make the layers roughly equal in width - it doesn't really matter about the size of the centre, as you can even cut out another circle if you're feeling confident.
- Swap the two middle circles of the sponges round - the sponge recipe is quite sturdy, so it should hopefully be easy to do this without breaking them. You now have two complete cakes of alternating flavours.
- Mix up a positively obscene amount of chocolate icing. I don't know the measurements for this, so you'll have to use your imagination. Spread this icing between each circle so that they're glued together.
- Cover the top of one doctored sponge in icing, then place the other on top of it. Make sure that they're aligned with each other.
- Slather this entire arrangement in as much icing as possible - the icing for the outside should be fairly thick but still spreadable. Ideally, you don't want the concentric cracks in the top of the cake showing through, or the join in between the layers.
- The decorations are optional, so do whatever you like. We made up a bit more icing (plain this time) and piped it around the edge of the cake using a small plastic bag. The top of the cake was done by piping parallel lines on to it, then dragging a fork lightly through them (but a skewer would be much more suitable). If you're going to do this, make sure the icing is still wet, otherwise the tracks you make will show. If you get this decoration to work, award yourself a biscuit.
- Cover the cake with a bowl, turn the lights out and sing it a lullaby.
- Eat the rest of the icing and stay up all night. (Largely optional.) The icing on the cake will have solidified.
- Because of the large amount of icing, this is a pretty sturdy cake. No matter how well you've glued it, you have to be careful when cutting the cake, or the squares will come apart. Saw into it gently, and make sure that you've separated an entire piece before trying to move it - any tugging and you'll probably only get half a slice out.
- Take photographs of the cake and post about it on the Internet.