This indulgent marble cake is deceptively simple thanks to the secret ingredient: defrosted ice cream.
Made from very few ingredients, this cake’s hero ingredient is defrosted ice cream. It is one of my absolute favourite cakes to make. Why? Because it’s simple. Another reason? It’s a way of adding more ice cream to my diet. It’s so much fun, marbled with strawberry and chocolate. Way cool!
Serves: 6-8
Equipment: 900g (or similar) loaf tin
INGREDIENTS
For the cake:
- oil, for greasing
- 150g strawberry ice cream, defrosted completely
- 150g chocolate ice cream, defrosted completely
- 9g freeze-dried strawberry pieces
- 140g self-raising flour, sifted
For the topping:
- 150g dark chocolate, chopped
- 150g double cream
- 150g strawberries, halved
METHOD
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Start by preheating the oven to 190°C/fan 170°C/ gas mark 5. Line and lightly grease a 900g loaf tin.
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Have the defrosted ice creams in two separate bowls – what we want is two distinct colours that we can marble.
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To the strawberry ice cream, add the freeze-dried strawberries and mix through. Add 70g of the sifted flour and mix through till you have a batter. Do the same with the chocolate ice cream, adding the flour and mixing till you have a smooth batter.
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Now, a spoonful at a time, alternate the batter into the prepared cake tin, till you have used up all of both mixtures. Take a long skewer and, using sweeping motions, gently marble the mixture. Pop into the oven to bake for 30–35 minutes
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While the cake bakes, make the ganache. Put the chopped chocolate in a bowl. Place the cream in a pan and put it on a medium to high heat. As soon as the cream just starts to come up to the boil, but is not actually boiling, take it off the heat.
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Pour the hot cream all over the chocolate and stir till you have no more chunks of chocolate and a rich, smooth, glossy mixture. Pop it into the fridge and leave to chill for 30 minutes.
- Take the cake out of the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before removing and cooling completely on a rack.
- Remove the ganache from the fridge – it should be cooled and smooth and easy to spoon, not completely hardened. Whisk the ganache mixture till light and fluffy and doubled in size. Pop into a piping bag with a star nozzle attached and pipe all over the top of the cake. Dress with halved strawberries and your cake is done, ‘easy as pie’ – or should we say, ‘easy as cake’? – ready to slice and enjoy