Graffiti Cake..

Today I attempted to make a "Graffiti" Cake.  This idea was taken from Lorraine Pascale's: Home Cooking Made Easy.  It a simple sponge with an amazing coloured candy outside.  I tweaked her recipe slightly to make it my own.

Ingredients for sponge:
200g butter, soft.
200g soft light brown sugar.
1teaspoon of Vanilla extract.
5 free range eggs.
200g self raising flour.
Pink food dye.


Preheat oven to 180 degrees.  Grease and line two 8 inch cake pans.  Next, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs and flour and whisk until combined.  Add your food dye until you get the desired colour - for me, the deeper the better!  I chose pink but you really can use any colour that takes your fancy!  Then divide the mixture into two pans and pop in the oven for around 25-30 minutes.

Lorraine's recipe uses buttercream but I used a swiss meringue icing as I prefer that!
Ingredients for icing:
2 medium eggs whites.
4 tablespoons of golden syrup.
100g caster sugar.
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar.
1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Whisk all ingredients, bar vanilla extract, over a bain marie. You need to whisk until the icing becomes thick and glossy.  It will take around five minutes to take on that meringue like consistency!  Once the mixture is holding peaks, remove from the heat.  Add the vanilla and whisk until room temperature.  

To assemble the cake, put a blob of icing on your cake board and stick the first cake down.  Then smooth icing in a thin layer over the top.  Stick your second layer down. Then apply your crumb coat.  This is a thick layer that glues all the crumbs to your cake before applying your final layer of icing.  It basically stops any crumbs mixing with your icing and being visible on your finished cake! Then put your cake into the fridge for half an hour to set.  Then apply a final, thicker, neater, layer of icing.

Meanwhile... the exciting part begins!!!
Ingredients for the graffiti edging:
250g granulated sugar.
130mls water.
130mls golden syrup or liquid glucose (I used golden sugar!).
Food colouring (I used the same pink as the cake!)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Put the sugar and water into a pan on a low heat to dissolve the sugar. Swirl, rather than stir the sugary water.  Once dissolved, bring to a boil.  Check on the sugar every five minutes. You do this by dipping a teaspoon into the sugar and then into a cup of water. After a minute or so, check the teaspoon. If the sugar on the spoon has disappeared, its not ready, so continue boiling.  It is ready when the sugar on the spoon it hard.  When it is, take the pan off the heat, add the food dye and vanilla.  Pour the sugar into a jug (be careful - hot sugar syrup on skin hurts!!!) Leave to cool for a minute and then pour, in bands, onto a prepared length of baking parchment, making circular shapes.

When the graffiti is firm, but pliable, peel off the parchment and wrap around the cake.  I had trouble getting it all off in one go so I broke it up and wrapped it round the cake in pieces - it still looked good and I could pick the best bits of the graffiti to go on the cake!   

This is a really fun cake, it is relatively easy but looks very impressive.  I think it's definitely worth a go!!