Would this chocolate/chili/sour cream-cake work?

Money~Bunny_3

I have to make a cake for tomorrow. I am usually good at cakes but this has to be a very, very good cake for a competition at work. So far everyone has made chocolate cakes.

My idea is to make a marble cake, have the chocolate mixture flavoured with chili and the other mixture flavoured with sour cream or creme fraiche. Is that likely to taste good?

liz545

Chocolate and chili is a very traditional combination in Mexican food, so I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work, per se. However, if this is for a competition or special occasion I'd be inclined to stick with a recipe I'd used before and was confident about - the kind of thing you could do with your eyes closed IYSWIM. Also, you don't know whether your colleagues will like it, they may have rather conservative tastes, or even be allergic to chilli (like my mum). So if it were me, I'd stick with a tried and tested recipe; like a plain marbled cake - they look very impressive and taste good. Why not do the chocolate batter with sour cream, and the white batter with melted white chocolate?
Let us know how it goes and if you win! :j

organic_wanabe

Wow it sounds fantastic. If you make it let us know how it tastes. Good luck.

Money~Bunny_3

I'm going to try both a plain marbled cake and the one with chili and see how they taste... (cupcake trial runs)

Thanks for the ideas, good point about colleagues and chili. I was thinking that a very mild hint of chili would make it palatable (plus a red chili dipped in dark chocolate as a cake topper/warning).

I'll let you know how I get on (blind taste test on flatmates later )

Money~Bunny_3

Well, I made the chocolate and chilli mixture, using a 1-egg victoria sponge-style mixture with 1 tablespoon of flour replaced with cocoa and about 4g of fresh chili (deseeded and sliced).

Tasted just right uncooked. Sadly when cooked it lost a lot of its spiciness and my flatmates couldn't really taste it. The sour cream wasn't noticeable in the cake flavour either.

However they did taste good to my flatmates, so I am doing something right!!! Will try adding a pinch of chili powder to go with the fresh chili next time I try it out.