Edgars Reggae Cake

          
                                                                                                      by the konstant kraver

I have a friend who is pretty much obsessed with two things: Reggae and Coffee. So for his birthday I thought it would be fun to try to incorporate the two. The result was a fun, colourful cake that not only looked amazing and was a show stopper when it was cut open but tasted awesome…so I am told. The cake recipe was one adapted from Cheftalk.  

The original icing I used was  a boiled coffee butter icing, which, I quickly learned, although it tastes fantastic is more suited to just pouring on a cake and letting it set: after many trials, I finally had to take a creative approach to make it work. I think next time just a simple coffee butter icing would be easier; I found such a recipe which has been adapted from Little Potbelly and included it below for anyone who wants to try it out.

Reggae Cake

2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour (do not sift the flour)

1 ¼ cups granulated sugar

3 ½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 ¼ cups milk

Vegetable oil
1 stick butter (not margarine), softened
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
4 medium sized eggs
2 tsp red colouring
2 tsp yellow colouring
2 tsp green colouring

Coffee Buttercream Icing

250g unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 Tbsp milk, at room temperature
1 tsp Vanilla essence
4 tsp instant espresso powder, dissolved in a small amount of hot water
500g icing sugar, sifted

Preheat oven to 175°C
Cut wax paper to fit the bottom of (3) 9 x 1 1/2-inch round pans. Spray the pans with cooking spray, place the wax paper in the pans and spray the paper.
In a large mixing bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt, mixing well.
1. Measure the 1 ¼ cups of milk in a 2 cup measuring cup….then add enough vegetable oil to bring the liquid up to 1 1/3 cups.
Add the milk/vegetable oil mixture, butter and vanilla to the flour mixture and beat with an electric mixer on medium to medium-high speed for 2 minutes, scraping sides of bowl as needed.
Add the eggs and continue beating an additional 2 minutes. Divide the batter among 3 bowls and add the different colourings to each bowl and stir till you get lovely vibrant colours.
Pour batter into prepared pans.
Bake at 175°C for 20 to 25 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted near center of cake comes out clean, or until cake springs back when touched lightly in the center.
Cool cakes on wire racks for 15 minutes; remove from pans and cool completely.
2. In a large mixing bowl beat the butter, milk, espresso mixture and half the icing sugar until smooth.  Gradually add the remainder of the icing sugar to produce a butter-cream of a smooth and creamy consistency.
3. Spread a generous amount of icing in between the layers and assemble the cake. Next use the remaining icing to cover the cake. Decorate with any red, yellow and green sprinkles you can find in keeping with the Reggae theme.