This week I’ve been part of something very exciting! Stork wants to help the novice and avid baker to get creative in the kitchen and wow their friends and family this Christmas through creating a show-stopping, crowd- pleasing cake! As part of this campaign, I’ve been invited to recreate their Christmas Chocolate Ombre cake created by Ruth Clemens and put my own festive spin on it!

For those who follow my posts and recipes, you’ll see I use Stork in a number of my bakes. It always makes for a light and fluffy sponge and is perfect for a classic Victoria sponge. I also highly recommend it in Maderia cakes and I use it in my Classic Birthday Cake recipe. Their Stork with Butter is perfect for soft sponges and smooth fillings alike so I couldn’t wait to get baking!

You may or may not know that I’ve currently got one working hand after breaking a bone in my left hand last month but that hasn’t stopped me from making some tasty treats in my lovely red kitchen.

One thing that is pretty cool about this product, is that it can be used straight from the fridge! How many times have I forgotten to get the butter out to bring it to room temperature and had to wait ages before I could get my apron on and get baking! It’s lovely and smooth and has a nice buttery taste.

Baking The Cake

Using Ruth Clemens’ Christmas Chocolate Ombre cake recipe, I made three sponges; a vanilla, medium chocolate and full chocolate. Stork with Butter creates more volume as you mix, producing a lighter, fluffier texture! I baked them for the time stated and left to cool completely. I then wrapped them in cling film and left them in a cool room overnight. This is one of my baking top tips as when you are stacking and decorating, as we will be doing with this cake, it’s best to let the crumb structure ‘firm up’ as once made a cake can be very fragile. By leaving it wrapped well overnight, there is less chance of crumbs falling off or the cake breaking apart when you handle it.

The Buttercream

Again, following the recipe on the Bake with Stork website, I made the delicious soft buttercream using Stork with Butter. I have adapted it slightly by not using coca powder and instead using almond extract. As I wanted quite a pale colour buttercream to contrast with my decorations, I firstly beat the Stork with Butter on it’s own on a high speed for about 5 minutes. This aerated it and made it go a much paler colour. I then added in the icing sugar and mixed well. Finally, just to get a nice pale colour, I added in a teeny tiny bit of purple concentrated food colouring as this neutralises any yellow. You can read more about this here.

Then to stack the cake I started with the most chocolate sponge, then a layer of luscious buttercream, then the mid chocolate sponge, more buttercream and finally the vanilla sponge. Then I covered this all in a thin layer of buttercream and chilled for 15 minutes before taking it out and covering in a second and final layer just to cover up any crumbs or dark sections of chocolate sponge showing through.