Christmas Wreath Cake

Christmas Wreath Cake (For about 15 persons)

For the cake

1 sachet of 400g of "Moirs" cake mix in Chocolate Flavour (refer photo step 1)

100g of chocolate chips (refer photo step 1)

125g of Almond powder (refer photo step 1)

100g of melted Margarine (Leave in the microwave on high for 30 seconds)

175ml of milk

10ml of Almond essence

1 savarin mold of 24cm diameter (refer photo step 5 & 6)

5-10g of butter or margarine to lightly grease your mold

For the decoration

500g of green Fondant/ Sugar paste

50g of red Fondant/ Sugar paste

Red edible glitter dust

About 50g of Nutella

A circular cookie cutter (3-4cm diameter)

20g-30g of corn flour for dusting

Procedure

Step 1: Get your Chocolate Cake Mix, your Almond powder and chocolate chips ready !

Step 2: Place them (Vanilla Cake Mix, Almond powder and chocolate chips) in a bowl and using a hand whisk, mix them all together.

Step 3: Melt your margarine in the microwave (30 seconds on high) and add it to your dry mixture from step 2. Eventually add your Almond essence to your milk and add the resulting mixture as well.

Step 4: Still using your hand whisk, mix mix mix ! As soon as the mixture color is uniform (Chocolatey) and that your hand whisk leaves some "trails", stop mixing, your cake batter is ready ! (Do not overmix...)

Step 5: Get your Savarin mold ready. This is sold at Intermart Ebene and the "Domedia" brand quality is great from my experience. Its non-stick nature makes it even more great and helpful .

Tip: If you do not have a Savarin mold, no worry, you can still bake a normal circular cake and when it is cool enough and using a smaller circular object (bowl, cookie cutter etc...), cut and remove its center !

Step 6: Wash, dry and grease your Savarin mold lightly using your silicon brush.

Step 7: Start to fill your mold with your cake batter. Ensure that the latter is evenly distributed ...

Tip: To ensure that the cake batter is evenly distributed, I use to tap 2-3 times my mold on the table

Step 8: Your cake is ready to be baked in a preheated oven at 175 Degrees Celsius for 30 minutes (in the oven middle shelf). To test if your cake is done, insert a toothpick or brochette pick in the middle of any section of the cake, if it comes out clean/dry, then your cake is done !

Step 9: After baking time, allow your cake to cool for about 15-20 minutes (without unmolding). After this cooling time, turn your cake on a cake board while tapping gently to ensure that the cake comes out smoothly.

Step 10: Voila, your cake is now ready for decoration (fun part ).

Step 11: Get all your decoration stuffs ready !

Step 12: Using a spatula, spread a thin layer of Nutella on your cake until it is fully coated.

Step 13: Once your cake is fully coated with Nutella, using your rolling pin, flatten your green sugar paste to a thinkness of about 2mm (it should not be more than 2mm). Then using your circular cookie cutter, cut out as many circles as you can.

Tip: Do not forget to use some corn flour if you find your sugar paste a bit sticky ..

Step 14: Remove the excess part of sugar paste, put it aside and taking one circle at a time, pinch firmly in the middle section like in the picture below. Ensure that it has a sort of "wavy" shape ..

Step 15: Do the above to all your cut circles and stick them one by one on your cake. You may use anything pointy to ensure proper adhesion of the sugarpaste to the cake (via the Nutella ). Here I am using a fork handle. Repeat Step 14 and Step 15 until all the cake is covered.

Step 16: Once your cake is covered with the green fondant, take out your red fondant and make up small balls that will act like the cranberry in your christmas wreath cake. It you have some edible glitter dust in red, you may coat a small part of your red sugar paste balls lightly.

*No worry if you do not have the edible glitter dust, this is certainly optional and your cake will still be beautiful without ..