Pimp The Biscuit

Over at The Clayton’s Blog, Gail is running a competition to ‘Pimp The Biscuit’ that is, choose an everyday biscuit/cookie then make a large cake in it’s image. I stole Gail’s idea of a Jaffa Cake (sorry Gail) For those of you who have never met a Jaffa Cake they are the small biscuits at the front of the picture. The prize for the winner is (Drum Roll)

Now who wouldn’t want one of these hilarious items in their kitchen. The competition is open to everyone. So please have some fun and enter. The entries have to be in before the end of March .Gail runs a communal blog and there are some great contributors and lovely recipes. You will find everything you need to know about the competition here.

The humble Jaffa cake has been around for as long as I can remember. The base is spongy and curved so I decided to bake a sponge in a pasta bowl. As there is an orange filling in the biscuit, I used some Jelly marmalade to spread on top of the sponge I then made a chocolate ganache for the topping. It’s nice and glossy so looks like the chocolate topping on the biccie. There are little squares marked on the top of a Jaffa cake so I plonked the cooling tray on top of the ganache to make these. To be honest it made such a nice cake I would make it again.

For the sponge I used an all in one mixture using soft brown sugar to give a slightly darker colour to the base

Cake

Grease and line the bottom of a sandwich tin ( or in this case a pasta bowl)
Pre heat your oven to 180.c/160.c fan/ 355.f/Gas 4

100gg/4oz Self raising flour
100g/4oz softened butter or margarine
100g/40z soft brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon milk

Orange jelly Marmalade for the filling

For the Topping

200 g dark chocolate
120 mls double cream
A knob of butter about 1oz/25g

Just beat the cake ingredients all together until nice and soft. Spread in to the tin/bowl leaving an indentation in the middle. This will keep the surface nice and flat.
Bake for approx 15-20 minutes until the top bounces back to the touch.
Leave to cool completely before removing to a cooling rack or plate.

To make the Ganache topping place the double cream and butter in a small saucepan and break the chocolate into small pieces and place in another pan
Bring the cream just to boiling point and pour over the chocolate.
Beat until the chocolate is well combined and melted.
Leave to cool and thicken then spread on top of the cake.

I think chocolate ganache is one of the nicest cake toppings. Lovely and glossy and oh so rich. The higher the ratio of chocolate to cream the thicker the ganache will be. The usual ratio is 100 g chocolate to 60 of cream. I wanted mine quite thick for this and this ratio was perfect
The butter added gives extra gloss

Thank you Gail for this bit of fun I am keeping my toes crossed for the prize!