chocolate wedding cake

fishing-girl

I want to save some money so i am going to make my sisters wedding cake and she has decided that she wants a chocolate one. but i cant find a good recipe.
i know that there are special recipes out there i just cant find them,i want something that will keep well ,and is firm enough to be tiered,
thanks for any help

Loadsabob

Someone has posted this recipe on another site (I just did a search for it for you). It's a recipe that's I was looking at at the weekend, with a wedding in mind, in Mary Berry's Ultimate Cake Book (probably in the library if you'd like an illustration). It's looks GORGEOUS, and has no flour in, so stays moist, I guess. It's a three tier American Wedding Cake, she recommends it as a dessert at a wedding supper. Looks fab.

I'm not near the book right now, but Mary Berry also includes the quantities to make any one of the three tiers separately as a trial-run before commiting yourself...because that's a LOT of eggs to find you don't like it!!! I could post those from home. She warns that you need VERY large mixing bowls, too. I've never made it, but my experience of that book, and Mary's cakes in it is that they are fool-proof. I've had absolute perfection each time with her recipes, and have tried about six. And I'm no expert cake-maker!


This recipe serves 100.

30 eggs separated
8 whole eggs
2 lb 13 oz caster sugar
3 lb 9 oz plain choc broken into pieces and melted
1 lb 14 oz ground almonds
7 1/2 teaspoons black coffee
8 oz apricot jam sieved

For the icing:

2 1/2 lb plain chocolate broken into pieces
I lb unsalted butter

Decorate cake with foliage and flowers (ivy and cream roses on the picture)


Pre heat oven to Gas 5, 190 C, 375 F

Lightly grease and line a 6" tin, 9" tin and 12" tin (all deep round)

Measure the yolks, whole eggs and sugar into a large bowl and whisk till thick and light. Add slightly cooled chocolate with the almonds and coffee.

In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Fold carefully into the chocolate mixture, then divide the mixture into the prepared tins.

Bake in preheated oven. The small cake will take 30 mins, medium cake 50 mins, large cake 1 1/2 hours (all timings approx). The cakes can all go in oven at once - large cake on middle shelf and the 2 smaller ones on the top shelf. Test cakes with skewer which should come out clean

Turn cakes onto wire rack to cool completely. Turn cakes upside down so flat side is uppermost. Brush tops and sides with warmed sieved jam.

For the icing - melt the chocolate slowly in a bowl over pan of hot water, add the butter and stir till butter has melted. Place each cake on a cooling rack with baking tray underneath to catch the drips and poor over the chocolate icing. Smooth the top and sides with a palette knife and leave to set.

Place the largest cake on a cake board or serving plate and stack the other 2 cakes on the top. Decorate in situ with fresh flowers and foliage Serve with raspberry coulis.

Lucie_2

That's the chocolate cake my Mum made for my wedding! We had a fruit tier & a chocolate tier, it was tremendous. Mine was royal iced to match the fruit cake, so can't comment on the icing.

raeble

A friend had a chocolate wedding cake covered in little rolls of chocolate, on top of a chocolate frosting. It was very nice, it was also a warm august day - cake was hidden in the basement of the pub until the last minute.

maryb

If you want to make chocolate curls try the gadget they sell for shaving parmesan. Hold the tip as well as the handle and scrape it over some chocolate that you've melted onto a flat surface (a spare off cut of formica worktop is ideal0.

This makes it much easier than trying to hold a knife at an angle

pavlovs_dog

you dont necessarily need a parmeasan grater, a normal grater does the job just as well, and i'll bet you already own one of them.

if you are heading down the chocolate shavings route, a combination of white, choc orange, and plain milk choc looks impressive and tastes fab.

another thing that looks really, really swanky but isnt at all complicated is marbling. i use a variation of THIS recipe here for all my special sponge cakes, and everyone has always raved about them.

depending on how long you have to go (and how much a cheese factor you are looking to create ) perhaps DESIGNS BY DORIAN might be of interest - it would be a talking point if nothing else :rotfl:

also, on the chocolate theme, have you considered a chocolate fountain, or, on a smaller scale, chocolate fondues?

and as favours perhaps, fancy rice krispie/cornflake cakes, decorated with those sugar icing hearts (or other suitable wedding shapes)?

finally, whatever recipe you end up following, make sure you choose a good quality chocolate with a high coccoa bean content. all the cheap n cheerful everyday stuff we get on the high st has a very low coccoa bean content and goes terribly bitty when melted.

hobbesy_2

Oooh i'm always lurking on here and may finally be able to help someone else! lol.

Can't cook to save my life, but our wedding cake (3 years ago now! oooh) had sponge layers that aren't firm enough to tier by just placing the columns on them. I may be stating the obvious so please don't shoot me, but to tier softer cakes you buy dowel type rods from the cake shop along with your columns, these go into the cake with the columns directly over so the cake doesn't actually take the weight of the layer above

Keri -x-

Loadsabob

Good thinking! The Mary Berry cake doesn't use pillars or anything, the tiers are placed directly on top of one another, which I guess distributes the weight more evenly. I quite like the style that doesn't have pillars, too...