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Christmas Drip Cake

A gorgeous addition to any Christmas table. You can make all of the elements to this cake up to 3 days before and just put it together on the day x

This is a little more lengthy than my normal recipes with quite a few processes but quite simple to achieve. If you'd prefer to attempt it with me showing you how, here is my next Drip Cake Class Date
Cake
200g S/R Flour
200g caster sugar
200g stork or softened butter
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Buttercream
450g icing sugar
250g butter or stork

Biscuits (Makes about 8 biscuits)
75g unsalted butter, softened
40g caster sugar
20g cocoa
100g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

Drip
120g Dark chocolate
80ml of double cream 

Meringue kisses (Makes about 30-40 kisses) 
2 egg whites
100g caster sugar
vanilla extract
Gel colours x2

2 candy canes
Maltesers
Edible gold glitter
Chocolate coins
Box of mint matchmakers (finely chopped)
3 Macarons  (homemade or good shop bought ones)

A Birthday Version
You will also need a small gingerbread man cutter  2 x 6 inch loose bottomed greased and lined cake tins. Large lined baking sheet.

Start by making the ganache, by gently heating the cream then stir in the chocolate, pour into a bow, and leave to come to room temp.

Preheat the oven 90˚c

Next make the meringue kisses, In a clean bowl whisk your egg whites to soft peak stage, now very slowly with the whisk still running on medium add the caster sugar. Turn up the power and add the extract, whisk until thick and glossy.

Dip the paintbrush into the gel colour, making sure there's not too much excess, on the inside of the piping bag paint 4 evenly spaced vertical strips starting inside the nozzle to almost the other end of the bag. Spoon the meringue into the bag. Pipe your kisses onto the lined baking sheet and bake in a low oven for about an hour.

Cream the butter and sugar together until pale, light and fluffy.  Sieve the flour and cinnamon into the bowl and mix to bring the dough together. Turn out of the bowl, flatten into a disc, cover with clingfilm and leave the dough to chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Turn the oven to 170c

Dust a large piece of parchment with plain flour place the cookie dough on top. Cover with another piece of parchment and roll the dough out to a thickness of 3mm. Peel the top sheet of baking parchment off the dough and using the cutter stamp out the biscuits and place on prepared trays. Gather any dough scraps together, re-roll and stamp out more biscuits.  

Bake on the middle shelf of the preheated oven for 15 minutes until golden and well baked. 
Cool on wire racks. 

Turn the oven down to 160˚c

Next make the sponge in the bowl of a free-standing mixer cream the Stork and sugar together until pale, light and fluffy. Gradually add the beaten eggs and vanilla.  Add the flour, mix until light and fluffy.

Divide equally between two 6inch prepared  tins, spread level and bake on the middle shelf of the preheated oven for about 40-45 minutes or until golden and a skewer comes away clean when inserted into the middle of the cakes.

Turn the cakes out of the tins onto a wire cooling rack and leave until cold. Cut each sponge through the centre with a serrated knife so you have 4 layers. 

To make the buttercream tip all of the ingredients into the bowl of free-standing mixer and beat for about 6 minutes until light and fluffy.

Sandwich the cakes together with two thirds of the buttercream and layers of chopped matchmakers. 

Cover the assembled cake with a sparse layer of buttercream and spoon the remaining buttercream into a piping bag fitted with an open star nozzle. 

Pour the ganache into a squeeze bottle or into a disposable piping bag and create a ring around the top of the cake, coaxing the ganache to drip down the sides of the cake. 


Now pipe detail onto the cake, pipe swirls around the edge, then you'll need to pipe some supports to stand the biscuits against. Finally just before serving decorate with the biscuits, glittered maltesers, candy-canes and gold coins.   
*The sponges and buttercream can be made and frozen for up to two months before needed.