Cakes, Glorious Cakes.

It's my birthday bitch! Well it was...so it's cake galore with my Ultimate Chocolate Fudge Cake with Dulce de Leche Mascarpone, plus a *bonus* stacked Persian Love Cake with Pistachio & White Choc.

she is beauty, she is grace

‘What’s your favourite thing to bake Rubes?’

I can bet my life on this question being asked whenever I meet anyone new. If I got a penny every time, I would be nowhere near a millionaire but I would be able to comfortably buy a double packet of jaffa cakes WHICH AREN’T ON SALE and have some leftover change. So, yeah, it gets asked a lot but I’m not mad about it. It gives me the perfect opportunity to give a speech, which in my head would be like my Oscar speech.

*cough cough*

I would like to start firstly by thanking you, the reader, supporter, avid fan (lol i’m pushing it here, aren’t I?) for giving me this opportunity to tell you why for me, cake is the epitome of happiness and why it would be the one and only thing I would bake every day till the end of my days.

Let me ask you a question.

Have you ever seen anyone looking sad buying, eating, or even just holding a cake? Good, amazing, licking up every last crumb sort of cake makes every part of you smile. Your face, your eyes, the backs of your cheeks, your belly. Even bad, sad, dry AF cake is still edible. Just drown it in custard and it’ll instantly revive itself just like magic, into something I’ll scoff down in seconds.

cakes from my early days

People buy cake to celebrate. To commemorate. To experience. To share joy. To share happiness. To say I love you. GOOD THINGS ALWAYS HAPPEN WHEN CAKE IS ABOUT. Even a sad/bad event turns into something digestible and delicious if there is the promise of tasty carby crumbs on the table. Every cloud has a plate of cake, I am telling you.

But for me, it’s also the mems that cake brings. When we were growing up, the cake little Kells used to buy us every year would either be a deliciously moist, slightly spiced, sticky topped Jamaican Ginger Loaf or one of them frozen Strawberry Gateaux’s you’d have to defrost which has the sides covered in flaked almonds that everyone would always scrape off. If I close my eyes and cut out the gazillion voices and thoughts in my head, I can almost taste it just by thinking of it. Food is so evocative, especially when it’s paired with an experience. And cake is just that for me.

The wisest words I can impart to anyone would be: never trust anyone who doesn’t like cake. That’s the biggest walking red flag if I ever saw one.

cakes from nowadays

Cake was my first love, one of the first things I taught myself to properly bake and the first and only week on Bake Off I wasn’t completely shitting my pants about. It’s something I am pretty particular about. Not in the way of being fussy or picky or painfully tricky to please. I just want whatever cake I’m going to eat to be made with a bitta love, a bitta care and a whole lot of flavour. That flavour could be straight up, plain jane vanilla but let it be GOD DAMN VANILLA IN MY FACE. None of this meek and mild business, not for Rubes, not on my watch and not in this lifetime.

Cakes got me, and I’ve always, always always got time for cake.

pov: me everytime i eat cake

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…Kitchenaid Dinner!

I am honestly buzzing to have been able to do this so soon after launching (happy 1 month newsletter-versary by the way!) so thrilled to announce the winner of the first Last Bite giveaway is MOLLY HOLTAN!!!

handshakes all around

MOLLY make sure you hit me up with an email later today and I’ll get that kitchenaid over to you pronto. If you don’t see this, I will stalk you, so be prepared. Again, this giveaway is not affiliated with any companies or endorsed in any way - it’s just a little way to say thanks for the support. Will there be another at the next subscriber milestone? You betcha.

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Alrighty folks coming up next week, the recipes are available to EVERYONE. Can I get a woo? WOOO! Everyone loves a tart (lower those eyebrows) so I’ll be sharing with you my go-to Sweet Shortcrust Pastry recipe to make my baked Chai Custard Tarts. Heavenly spiced, velvety smooth set custard, sitting on top of a buttery vanilla laden pastry and topped with torched meringue. Big or small, individual or sharing portion. However you want it, she is deliciously naughty.

Next week the newsletter also features a nifty little discount code for a brand I love. Yay for discounts! As well as all the usual suspects of random Rubes ramblings, recommendations and tips and tricks.

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This week has been cake GALORE. First up we had the next installment of my never-ending series of ‘Around The World in 80 Cakes’ and cake number 60 – the Croatian Madarica. A stacked cakey slash biscuity affair with layers of chocolate custard. I’m not entirely sure this was worth the effort I put in (the most PC answer I could give) and definitely think it could do with a little more juhsjz? Zjhush? Zhush? So make it if you wanna bake it but my honest advice? Skip this and make one of the next two if you are after a little baking proj this weekend.

Next, we have my Mum aka Kelly B’s birthday cake, which was a bit of a riff on the Persian Love Cake. So sure, I definitely shared my bundt version of it with you last week but this time I am sharing it as a stacked cake - making it perfect for a birthday or a celebration or an anniversary or just a Thursday. The sponge still has bundles of flavour and despite it being soaked to an inch of its life with a beautiful rose and cardamom spiked sugar syrup, it’s sturdy as heck.

Could it be…wedding cake material? I think so! (Say some prayers for me as I have been asked to make my cousin/best friends wedding cake next year. I say I have been asked, more like I demanded to make it. Potato/potato).

In addition to all the normal loveliness, this is filled with a white chocolate and pistachio paste - very similar to the one featured in last weeks newsletter for my cardamom knots - and then smothered in a vanilla swiss meringue buttercream. I have a real bone to pick with buttercream (shock, rubes not happy at something, tell me something new am I right??) and speak about it quite extensively here but SMBC is the only way to go, in my opinion, for something stacked, intricately decorated and stable. Please disown anyone who suggests, recommends or uses American Buttercream.

she's gold, not old

I mean, look at her. She’s so pretty! In the Rubes Recommends section, I have broken down the decoration and given you nozzle number (I only used 3 different ones to do all the piping) and locations where to use them in order to recreate this magic, if you want. If you don’t want, sure your cake will be magic-less but still delicious nonetheless.

Makes: 3 x 7 inch sponges

Persian Love Cake Stacked Edition

69.9KB ∙ PDF file

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W H A T – Y O U – N E E D –

• Sponge

300g Unsalted Butter / Baking Margarine (I opt for the latter)

100 ml Veg Oil, or any other neutral tasting oil

255 g Caster Sugar

6 Medium Eggs

18 Green Cardamom Pods

275 g ‘00’ Flour or Plain/AP, sifted

400 g Ground Almonds

2 1/2 tsp Baking Powder, sifted

Pinch of Salt

Zest and Juice of 1 Lemon, large

1 1/4 tbsp Rose Water

150 ml Buttermilk or Crème Fraiche

• Drizzle

75 g Caster Sugar

60 ml Water

45 ml Lemon Juice, fresh

Zest of 1 Lemon

3 Cardamom Pods

3/4 tbsp Rose Water

• White Chocolate & Pistachio Paste

125 g Unsalted Pistachio, shelled

160 g White Chocolate

50 g Unsalted Butter

• Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream

You can find that in this newsletter here.

M E T H O D -

1. Preheat oven to 150°C Fan/Gas Mark 3/302°F Fan and grease and line 3 x 7 inch cake tins. YES BOTTOM AND SIDES OKAY. The faff now is so worth it later.

2. Add the butter, oil and sugar to a stand mixer bowl and cream together until light and fluffy using the paddle attachment, for at least for 5 minutes on a medium speed. I always opt for baking margarine where I can as the build up of these consist of added oil which lends itself well to the tenderness of the crumb.

3. Next in are the eggs – I would normally say to beat well between each addition but I plonked them all in together and still yielded a great result. Just really give it time to do its thing, emulsify (become one) with the rest of the mix so leave it to mix on a medium to high speed for about 5 minutes. Don’t worry if it looks curdled, it will sort its act out in the next step.

4. In a separate bowl mix together the flour, ground almonds, salt and baking powder. Do this in a separate bowl before going into the main one as you want to work the batter as little as you can, so making sure all these ingredients have met and become friends before going to the party just helps everything mingle with the butter base more evenly.

5. Next you want to split open the cardamom pods, remove the seeds and use a pestle and mortar to grind down to a fine dust. If you have a mini blender, use this but when I say fine dust, just as fine as you can go. These things are a slight pain in the ass to break down so do as much as your patience allows you to.

6. Add the mixed flour, ground cardamom seeds, lemon zest and juice and rose water to the main bowl and give it a good mix until there are no visible streaks of flour. You can do this by hand using a rubber spatula or pop it back into the stand mixer and mix on a low to med speed.

7. When combined, pour in the buttermilk to finish and fold in well to completely combine before transferring the batter evenly between the three tins. Tip: evenly dividing batter between tins (yes, I am talking about weighing each of them) means an even bake across all sponges.

8. Pop it into the oven and bake for 32 to 35 minutes (depending on your oven, it may be more 32 but you know that thing better than I do so adjust the timing accordingly).

9. In the meantime, make the drizzle by adding all ingredients to a saucepan (don’t worry about removing the seeds from the pod, just pierce each one with a knife and pop it in) and place over a gentle heat until slightly thickened, with a more syrupy consistency. This should take about 8 to 10 mins over a low to med heat. When done, leave to one side.

10. Once your sponges are baked, allow them to sit for 5 minutes at room temp to relax slightly. You should see the sponge edges start to come away from the tin

11. Turn out each of the sponges onto a cooling rack before using a pastry brush to liberally apply the sugar syrup across each one. Use up all of that sugary goodness to ensure your sponges are moist AF.

12. Carefully cover the sponges with clingfilm and leave to completely cool. Yes the are warm but wrapping them now means the sponges will retain their moisture.

13. In the meantime, make the white chocolate and pistachio filling by adding the pistachios to a pan of boiling water. Let them bubble away in there for 5 minutes, until the water has a brown film. Drain the pistachios in a sieve, rinse under cold water and peel away any remaining skin to reveal beautifully bright green pistachios.

14. Pop them into a blender and blitz until you are left with a fine green paste/crumb.

15. Add the white chocolate and butter to a pan and gently heat. I SAID GENTLY OKAY! Use a rubber spatula to mix until smooth before adding in the pistachio paste. Mix well. Note: If you find you have oil pooling, no stress. Just drain this out well.

16. Once your sponges are cool, begin to stack your sponges using the buttercream of your choice (my swiss meringue duh) and use the pistachio paste between each layer (this likely won’t be spreadable by palette knife, so either roll out, or smush with your clean hands).

17. Decorate as you wish or check Rubes Recommends for how to pipe this beauty.

Now before anyone gets their knickers in a twist about how long this may all seem, let me break down how easy this is to prep, make and bake.

• THREE DAYS BEFORE SERVING : Make the sponges and sugar syrup. Don’t store these in the fridge, I promise they will be fine wrapped up in clingfilm and sat at room temp. If you pop them in the fridge, the texture of the crumb will alter slightly and it will be a firmer sponge.

• TWO DAYS BEFORE SERVING : Make the buttercream.

• DAY BEFORE SERVING : Make the pistachio paste and crumb coat.

• DAY OF SERVING : Any final deco bits and demolish.

Yup. A whole lotta love, for a whole lotta yum. I would love to have shared pics of the cake guts and how it looks sliced but it’s my mum’s birthday TODAY so once we have tucked into this joyous mound of carb, I’ll upload a pic to show it off in all its glory.

please ignore the petals on the side which look like ears

And finally onto the last cake of the week and my personal favourite – MY BIRTHDAY CAKE. This year I wanted something yummy, something scrummy and something I literally couldn’t stop eating. And folks, I am so pleased to say: THIS. IS. IT.

This is by far one of the best cakes I have made in a very, very long time. It has the fudgiest, softest, full of flavour chocolate sponge, a chocolate crunch layer which tastes just like a Ferrero rocher and then it’s all sandwiched and smothered in a dulce de leche whipped mascarpone cream. Yup, I did what I did and I said what I said.

And HOLY SH*T. It is delicious, divine, sensational, sublime and outstanding all rolled into one. It is every bit as indulgent as it sounds. It is every bit as sexy as it sounds. And now every bit is yours.

Makes: 3 x 7 inch sponges (we only use 2, I explain the use of the third later)

W H A T – Y O U – N E E D -