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Saturday, February 23, 2013

Hedgehog cake (orange, carrot and pistachio cake with mocha-sunflower icing)

This is S's birthday cake. He mentioned carrot cake at some point, also mentioned cake in the shape of a hedgehog at some point, he likes nuts and coffee, and I'm still trying to find the perfect carrot-coffee-nut combination after he requested it a few years ago.

Cake recipe adapted from this one (my quantities are weird because I scaled it down to make two layers instead of three).

For the cake:
50g tahini
83ml sunflower oil
2 tbsp pomegranate molasses
zest of 2 oranges, and 67ml juice (juice of approx 1 orange)
150g soft light brown sugar
2 tbsp ground linseed mixed with 5 tbsp boiling water
133g carrot, grated finely
67g chopped pistachios
117g plain flour
1 2/3 tsp baking powder
1 1/3 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cardamom
1/3 tsp grated nutmeg

For the icing:
(this made too much - half or two thirds this quantity would have been sufficient)
16 oz firm silken tofu, drained
1 tbsp veg oil
1 tbsp very strong coffee
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 cup smooth sunflower seed butter

To finish:
~1 cup slivered toasted almonds
3 raisins (1 big one for the nose and two smaller, equal-sized ones for the eyes)

Heat the oven to 360F / 180C. Grease two 8 inch round cake tins and line the bases. In a large bowl, whisk together tahini, pomegranate molasses, orange zest and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in linseed mixture, then stir in the grated carrot, pistachios and orange juice. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder and spices with a fork. Add the flour mixture to the wet mixture and fold together until just combined. Divide the mixture between the prepared tins and bake for 25-30 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool in tins.

While the cake is baking, make the icing. Crumble the drained tofu into a blender jug, add the oil and coffee and blend until smooth. Add the icing sugar, cocoa, cinnamon, salt and vanilla and blend until smooth. Add the sunflower seed butter and blend until consistent. Transfer the icing into a bowl, cover and refrigerate for an hour, until thickened.

When the cakes are cool and the icing chilled, you can assemble the cake. For a normal cake, just layer it up and stop here.

I wanted to make a curved, bilaterally symmetrical hedgehog shape. I made 4 layers (plus a little bit more on top, using almost all of the two circular cakes. I took one of the circular base papers (cleaned of cake bits) and cut out a template for the bottom layer (approx egg shaped; long side length equal to diameter of circle), then cut this shape out of one of the cakes with a sharp knife (save the offcuts for the upper layers), cutting at an angle of ~45 degrees. I then trimmed about 1 cm around all the edges of the template and cut this shape out of the other cake (working at the edge). Stack them so you can see how it is looking. Trim another centimetre off the template and cut the shape out of a combination of offcuts. Repeat. Use remaining offcuts to create a rounded top. Hopefully the stacked shape will look OK, if not you can do some rearrangement / trimming.

Next, put the bottom layer on a plate. Cover it with icing then add the next layer, Repeat until all the layers are done, also using the icing to stick the pieces together where the layers comprise more than one piece. Once the pieces are all layered up, cover the outside with icing. Make sure to fill in all the cracks and to go right down to the plate; you can use the icing to correct minor irregularities in shape. Smooth it out when done. Starting about 1/4 of the way back from the pointed end, stick slivered almonds into the icing to make spines. Cover the entire back part of the cake with these. On the part without almonds, make striations with a fork to look a bit like fur. Finally, choose your raisins, squish them into shape, and press into position on the cake.


This looks really fun - the almonds and raisins are quite effective, as good as I might have hoped. The cake is delicious - bit of a faff with all the chopping and grating and zesting and juicing and so forth, but tasty enough to warrant it on a special occasion. They didn't rise much but they did hold together very well as I cut and layered them. Carrot cake should be dense anyway, so I don't think the lack of eggs mattered much.

The icing is very soft but does stay in position. I wondered if the seed (or nut) butter was a necessary addition or if it would have been just as good without. Same with the cocoa - I added it mainly for colour but it might have been brown enough without. It definitely doesn't taste of tofu at all. Does taste of sunflower butter though, and with that plus the cocoa once again I have managed to drown out the coffee flavour. Tastes fine in combination with the cake though: the flavours work together well. (note: I may have been eating the leftover icing out of the tub with a spoon like pudding, this was kind of good - it's fairly light)
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