Life is Short. Eat Cake!
Clean Made 6” two layer gluten free Chocolate Orange Birthday Cake with Chocolate Ganache Buttercream, Dark Chocolate Drip, Homemade Orange Marmalade and Single Malt Scotch
We thought we’d shelved Clean Made after we were unable to scale our national events the way we’d planned to in 2018 and 2019. Then a pandemic hit and I did a thing and made a gluten and dairy free birthday cake for my husband, Mr Beer. I usually bake bundt or sheet cakes (I’ve never met a bundt I didn’t love) but we had a few strange months here following his unexpected cancer diagnosis (and said pandemic and the loss of another business) and I found myself watching random cake making videos when I needed a mental distraction because that was a hell of a lot better than doom scrolling.
This Chocolate Orange Drip Cake recipe is from British blogger Becky Excell's latest book How to Bake Anything Gluten Free. I followed the recipe, even using her preferred UK Dove's gluten free self raising flour for the cake. The only riff I made on this first attempt at her gluten free chocolate cake was adding a slick of homemade orange marmalade thinned with some excellent single malt scotch whisky between each layer of cake.
The decorations are freestyle using an organic chocolate orange bar, organic chocolate truffles, chocolate dipped orange slices, candied clementines from our garden, dehydrated orange slices, Vahlrona chocolate shavings, gold, black and white drageés, and some edible gold sheets – which BTW are fiddly AF.
I was afraid we may run out of cake (the horror) and ended up making two to be safe – one to the recipe with three 8" layers and a second (pictured here) with two 6" layers.
A note on cake making from my copious video watching... it's all about the tools. I couldn't have done this without a cake turntable and cake scrapers. They're game changers. Ditto getting comfortable using piping bags, if only to pipe buttercream between layers. Cake boards are a must. And having a squeeze bottle makes dripping ganache for this au courant drip cake look a breeze. More about that in a future post.
Whatever you pay for a custom cake, know that you're getting a deal. The ingredients alone for this 6” three layer cake were pushing $50. When you factor in higher quality, specialty flours, and actually paying for someone's time and skill, whatever you’re paying is worth every penny!
Want to see more cakes and baking content here? Want to make this delicious gluten and dairy free cake yourself? I’m working on developing some of my own recipes, including one for what I technically call making a metric f*ckton of chocolate buttercream (and making more cakes!) so stay tuned!
Need a serious gluten and dairy free chocolate cake?
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