Gold Cake

I was challenged to make a cake that tasted like a McVities Gold Bar (biscuit) ... reasons/genesis in the next section!

The genisis of this cake:

in August 2015 I shared my top secret recipe for a super-moist chocolate cake with the world (https://www.instructables.com/Super-Moist-Chocolate-Cake/)-OK, I published it on Instructibles! Several were subsequently made, including several "Happy Birthday" versions.

When my son Steve was getting married I was asked to make a white chocolate wedding cake for them, so I set about developing a white version of this cake. White chocolate is actually not as white as you may imagine, certainly not as white as icing.

Unfortunately, my daughter-in-law was then diagnosed with a condition which meant she tolerated chocolate poorly, so I ended up making them a magnificent lemon cake (...no I haven't got the pictures for that in a state that I can publish the recipe!) - with a lemon butter-cream icing. (Again, not at all white, so I have to employ a top secret technique to make it white!) Loosely based on a Lemon Drizzle Cake recipe, its the added lemon juice that keeps it moist...and allows it to freeze well.

Everyone at the wedding agreed it was the best lemon cake they had tasted - even the professional chef at the hotel was surprised that a software engineer could make such a good cake - he pronounced it the best lemon cake made by an amature he had ever tasted, high praise from a Michelin-starred chef (Google 'Hampton Manor, Solihull' for more details!).  

We're getting to it:... some of the guys at my son's wedding are his team from work, so I became well known at his centre for my cakes. Well, he had a sales promotion and awarded them with McVities Gold Bars. One chap remarked as to how good they were, but a bit small...somone else mused that it would be good as a cake..."but I bet no-one could make a Gold cake"..."I bet Steve's dad could", so the challenge was set and I re-developed my super-moist chokky cake as a gold cake.

The recipe below is now the third iteration, and is as close in flavour as I can get to a McVities Gold Bar. Enjoy!

This is a three stage cake:

1. Make the filling (ganache)

2. Make the cake, still beating that filling occasionally!

3. Assemble and decorate

Unlike my chocolate cake, I make no recommendation for how to decorate this cake, however you will see later how I decorated the one I recently made.

Weights, measures and equivalents.

This cake has been made in 8", 10" and 12" variants; accordingly the actual quantities of ingredients you will need clearly vary. Now, I must admit I have a habit of oscillating between different weight units depending on what I'm weighing (I was born in England in the '50s when we used pounds and ounces...it was only when we joined "The Common Market" that we started using grams.) Accordingly, for a single 10" cake I'll use 10oz so for two layers that's 20oz, but for a 12" cake it rises to 12oz/24oz... but meanwhile chocoloate and cream I'll measure in grams and mils (milli-litres) respectively; I remember its 150mil of cream for every 100grams of chocolate for the ganache to give a nice usable texture. But, when I make the filling for the hand-made chocolates (i.e. the truffle), its 75mil cream to 100grams chocolate.

"Cups" are an interesting measure; in effect a volume measurement, so the weight of the ingredients in a cup can vary with the density, for instance a cup of densley packed flour weighs 180g, as does a cup of sugar, however chocolate, being in a bar, is difficult to measure as cups and it needs to be finely chopped up to make sense. I've therefore tended to steer clear of cups for most of the recipies I've used, apart from the German Freindship cake, that recipe was passed to me in cups and I've not tried to vary from that. Having said that, I measured out the condensed milk and the "397g" can contained 380g of milk, which also measured as 310ml, 10Floz (fluid ounces) and 1⅓ cups. So, for this recipe I'll give you metric (grams and mils - milli-litres) and ounces...a teaspoon being 5mil and a serving spoon 15mil, and then do some serious maths to work out the equivalent "cups" measures, for those of you who like to work in cups. I'll give you US legal cups, hence if your cup is smaller (or larger) you may find you have less/more cake that the tin size! so if your cake is too small...Oh dear, you may need to eat it and make one using a bigger cup!

I see that in the US on average, a chocolate bar weighs between 1 and 2 ounces (28 and 56 grams) and that the average weight of a Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar is 1.55 ounces. The bars of chocolate I get from our local Lidl are sold as 100 gram bars - excluding wrappers (although sometimes they come up as 99g when I've pulled the wrapper off and broken it into squares). I've therefore not provided the "cup" equivalent for the white chocolate.

I've included (above) a handy table showing the quantities etc. needed for each size of cake - assuming a two-layer cake.

For this shopping list I'll give you an idea how much I brought for a 12" cake (however, as I was making a Gold Cake and a Chokky Cake for a Macmillan (Cancer Support) fund-raising event my son was running at his centre, I ended up making a 10" Gold cake.) 

Shopping list:

6 – 100g bars of white chocolate

3 – 300ml cartons Double Cream (Heavy Cream)

2 - cans sweetened full-cream condensed milk (! not low-fat or light!) - we get it in 379g tins

Clover, (or your favorite butter substitute)

Jar of Horlics*

Self Raising Flour (I got a 1.5Kg bag)

Baking powder - small tub

Salt

Caster sugar (it comes in 1Kg bags here in England so I had to get 2 bags for the 12" cake)

Large Eggs (12 for a two-layer 12" cake)

Sunflower oil

Milk (I got a 4-pint poly [2.272litres] - but you'll not need all of that)

Vanilla essence

Bars of Caramac to decorate (optional)

White chocolate buttons to decorate (again optional)

*Horlics? Yes, please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horlicks. My chokky cake uses coco, but my gold cake uses the sweet malted milk hot drink powder developed by founders James and William Horlick. It is a pale yellow colour and has a sweet, nutty, caramel flavour, unlike a lot of darker malted bedtime drinks (sorry Ovaltine!) which have a stronger malted taste. Accordingly, it lends itself to a Gold Cake nicely.

As an aside, at the time of writing I spent some £50 (50 gbp) on ingredients, which made a gold cake and a chokky cake. My son used them to raise £378 for Mcmillan Cancer Support, so I'm well chuffed!

The hardware you will need is as follows:

2 – round cake tins (sizes according to how big you are going!)

Grease-proof paper/baking parchment (and scissors to cut it)

Heavy based saucepan

Heat-proof mixing bowls able to withstand at least boiling water (I tend to use Pyrex glass bowls a lot now)

Sieve for the flour (!!not flower, stoopid auto-corrupt!!)

Whisk or fork or food mixer

Serving spoon (ssp) (15ml size), Tea spoon (tsp) (5ml size) - or equivalent measure

Measuring jug(s) - e.g. one for dry ingredients, one or two for the wet ingredients

Scales

Important safety tip: if your scales are posh, electronic ones (like the Perfect Bake ones my chockky cake won for me) you will need to ensure the batteries are fully charged before battle commences! 😂

This is the "stage 1" mentioned above. The filling for the cake is not a butter cream, it is a creamy ganache (a loose truffle type confection) so it is not sickly sweet, it is adult, rich and creamy. In summary you caramlise some of the condensed milk, melt the chocolate, boil the cream into the caramel (to make it hot so it combines with the chocolate and also to sterilise it), combine the three, allow to cool, whip as much air in to it as you can, then chill it.

Get a small bowl, and one a bit bigger. Break and weight your white chocolate into the smaller bowl. Pour over no more than a teaspoon of sunflower oil. Put about 1” of hot water in the big bowl, then stand the smaller bowl in it (don’t let the water overflow into the chocolate!), then put into a microwave. Process in 30-second bursts stirring in-between, initially the chocolate will be solid, but eventually it will ease. Depending on the power of your microwave it can either take 90 seconds (900 Watt oven) or about three to four minutes in my old 650 watt oven (i.e. keep doing 30-second bursts until the chocolate is runny with no lumpy bits but don’t over-cook!) Leave in a warm place (like the microwave?)

Lightly oil your heavy bottom saucepan, then tip the condensed milk into it. (You'll see in the ingredients that there is one quantity for this ganache, and one for the actual cake). Measure out your cream in advance (unless you are just using it direct from the tubs). Slowly bring the condensed milk to the boil on a low-to-medium heat, stirring all the time. as it thins out you can turn the heat up and stir a little quicker. It's worth taking a little trouble here, as its the ganache that gives the taste and colour of the gold bar. Although I've now got a sugar thermometer, I still prefer to work by sight...and you may not have one...as you cook the condensed milk it will change texture, almost forming a crumb, as it caramelises. One photo show the condensed milk caramelising (and compares the colour with the original milk), forming a thick syrup. Once the condensed milk has taken on a nice golden hue, turn down the heat to the lowest setting you have and quickly and carefully add in the cream; I always expect it to spit and hiss, but to date its always been politely behaved if I add the cream, stirring all the time. Once all the cream is added and blended in, bring the chocolate over to a safe place, then turn the heat back up to get the cream mixture boiling, again stirring all the time to keep it all blended and stop it burning.

As the cream comes up to the boil it will try to get out of the pan(!!) so quickly take it off the heat and slowly and carefully pour it into the melted chocolate, stirring the chokky all the time. It will need a fair bit of stirring to get it all to blend. Keep spooning the mix up from the bottom of the bowl to make sure nothing is trying to hide. Eventually you'll loose all the marbelling effect and the ganache will take on an even colour. Stir it gently for about 15 minutes as it cools down, before removing the bowl with the ganache from the water bath (I then tipped it into a larger bowl - the blue on shown in the photos above). Allow to stand for about 10 minutes, then gently beat the ganache for a couple of minutes. Repeat until the ganache starts to hold the air bubbles. You can now put it in a cool place for about 30 minutes, then beat it some more. It can then go in the fridge to completely cool off. Once cool, beat it again to loosen it up and get the air in.

This is "Stage 2" mentioned near the start. As I've quite a few images, I've chopped the actual "making of the cake" into "The Gold Flavour", "Lining the tins" , "Getting the eggs in", "Final Blending" and "Cooking".

Now, how many recipes have you seen where the first paragraph is "set oven temperature to ...", and then go on mix pastry, chill stuff in the fridge for 2 hours...etc. ...i.e. if you followed that, unless your oven was horribly inefficient it would be up to temperature long before the cake was ready to be cooked! When I made the lemon cakes, I was using a Neff oven which took only 10 minutes to heat up...when I made that cake it was in June (2018) and there was lots of sun shining on my solar panels so the oven had "full juice" anyway. Now we have moved to the countryside, the oven I have now is a Zanussi (...Electrolux) which takes more like 20 minutes to warm up...and I've not talked my dear lady wife into letting me have more solar panels (...but given the weather here, a wind turbine may generate more!) So, I'll only give to a rough idea when to fire up your oven within this recipe, I'm working on the axiom that you are intelligent enough to know how long your oven takes to warm up. 

OK, start by measuring all the caster sugar into a large mixing bowl.

Measure the Horlicks into a microwaveable bowl and add a quarter of the sugar (from the large mixing bowl.)

Mix the milk and condensed milk (the milks shown for the cake) together, then pour a couple of tea-spoonfuls into the Horlicks and mix well...yes, it will be hard work. Add a little more until you start to get a smooth (but crunchy) paste.

Microwave in 30-second bursts until the sugar and Horlicks have dissolved, them add the balance of the milk mix to the bowl, to help cool it down. Stir well and set aside to cool.

Before you line your tins, measure out your flour into a sieve over a large bowl and add the baking powder. Sieve into the bowl to break it up and add air.

Then measure the clover or other margarine/butter substitute into the large mixing bowl, then while it is coming up to room temperature, double-line your tins. 

The photos show how I double-line my tins, I'm not sure how it works, but magically the strips for the side usually line up,perhaps the greaseproof paper manufacturers talk to the tin manufacturers? Essentially, I cut three squares of greaseproof just larger than the tin, plonk the tin on top, mark around it to give me a circle slightly larger than the tin, then cut them out. Repeate for the other tin. I then cut strips of greaseproof at a width that matches the depth of the tins plus an extra half-inch (12mm). For my 10" tins I cut 14 strips. Fold them in half as a batch, and then cut them in half. Why? because it then acts as a stress relief, if you try to line your tin with the full-length strip, it will pull away from the tin. The 12" tins will need of the order of 20 strips...if you run out you can always cut some more.

Lightly grease the tin (with margarine or butter substitute...) Lightly grease one side of one round of greaseproof, then instal it into the tin, grease side down. In turn, lightly grease one side of each strip, then lay it into the tin, overlapping the second and subsequent strips by half the strip length. As you work your way round the tin you will see you are double-lining it with minimum effort. You will need to lift the first strip up to tuck the last strip under it. With a sacrificial piece of greaseproof, well grease all the greaseproof in the tin, in the direction the strips are laying to flatten them down, then lightly grease one side of the second round, and install it grease side down in the tin, lightly greasing the top side to sit it flat and ensure the cake will not stick to it. Repeat for the second tin.

You will have two rounds left for later...

By now the Clover/margarine/butter substitute will be at working temperature, so cream it into the sugar. Obviously, its not the full quantity of "humectant" for the cake, as you will be adding oil in a little while, so the creamed mixture will be course at the moment. 

Now might be a good moment to turn your oven on.

Break an egg into the mixing bowl, whip in 2fl oz of oil (approx), then blend into the creamed sugar. Repeat with the other eggs… basically you’re aiming for a mayonnaise type blend of oil and egg to be blended into the sugar/clover mix. This is so you’re getting lots of air into the mix and keeping it all emulsified, otherwise cakes made with oil can be heavy and not at all spongy! I used a fork because I can… (I've broken two baloon whisks so I'm not sold on them...you can use a food mixer if you like - mine just throws the mix out of the bowl even on the slowest setting - but then it was a cheap one). As an aside, I've had that fork since 1978, the silver plate has long since worn, but it is a good, heavy, well-made fork (Sheffield EPNS) and, fatefully the tines are bent so the spacing is uneven...but this just helps the fat to cream into the sugar more easily.

Sieve half your sieved flour into the egg mix, and gently stirr it in.

Then add half the horlics mix and stirr that in.

Then sieve the balance of your flour into the bowl, add the other half of the horlics mix and again blend it all in, to remove any lumps or bits of dry flour. You are stirring here, not beating as you want to keep in as much of that air that you worked in with the eggs as possible.

Divide the cake mix between the two tins. Aha! heres where those spare rounds of greasproof paper come into their own. Lightly place them over the wet cake mix in the tins ... this is to help prevent the tops of your cakes from going too brown while cooking. (Some recipes recommend you place rounds over once the cakes start going too brown, as we are aiming for gold (i.e. light brown) cakes, I cover them before cooking)

Put the cakes into the oven which is now up to temperature and cook for the recommended time.

Your nose is often a good barometer to the health of your cakes, if they smell like they may be getting a little too toasty, feel free to turn your oven down by a few degrees. At the end of the cooking time, stick a skewer (or a small flat-bladed knife) in each cake in turn to make sure they’re not soggy in the middle, if they are give them 5 minutes more. Keep testing until the skewer/knife come out clean.

Allow the cakes to cool in the tins for the time given, then onto a wire rack to cool completely. Leave one greaseproof paper round on the bottom of each cake, to stop them sticking when you stack them up while you have a breather(!!!)

...of course, if it all goes horribly wrong and you do overcook your cakes, its well known that chefs eat their mistakes, whereas surgeons ... anyhow, as I said at the start, this is the third iteration of this recipe - its not the third time I made this cake ... and there was those white chocolate variants I was working on before that as well! I'm only a man, I make no claims to perfection (hence why I've been married for 43 years....)

This is the final stage (Stage 3 shown at the start)  

When the cakes are quite cool take the ganache filling out of the fridge to allow it to warm up slightly so it is easier to work. Beat it lightly to get it moving again.

Remove the greaseproof rounds and sandwich the cakes together with some of the filling, aim for a layer of filling about 7mm (1/4") between each cake. This will then leave you with plenty for the top and sides. Try to get it as even and flat as you can ...there is no rush at this stage, as you are laying the foundations for your masterpiece, a blank canvas if you will.

You can see I initially worked on a breadboard (...no a wooden one, not an Arduino one - this is cooking not Fritzing!!!) this was for two reasons: its easy to turn to get a nice finish and all the mess stays on the board and not in the cake stand/container/box. I then put a round of greaseproof on my cake turntable and put the cake on that so I could turn it even more easily.

Notice I only filled the cake then smoothed the ganache on the sides of the cake. This was so I could hold it without getting in a mess while I rolled it in grated caramac bar.

For my cake I decoracted with white chocolate buttons first, in a simple pattern, then grated the caramac (caramel chocolate) bars onto a long piece of greaseproof paper, then rolled the cake along it to pick up the caramac onto the cake. I was quite pleased how well this worked. I was also quite please to see the white chocolate buttons had no amazon forest destroying palm oil in them (no palm oil - "sustainable" or otherwise) so I didn't have to worry that I may have inadvertantly been contributing to the destruction of the Amazon rain forest by palm-oil growers. (Rant over).

The advantage of placing the white chocolate buttons on first was that once I'd rolled the cake, the buttons could be cleaned off afterwards to give an interesting pattern. As you can see from the photos, I guaged how many buttons I would need by laying them out on the (clean) top of the cake first, then transferred them back to the breadboard, then matching them with the same number again. I then made a sort of "zig-zag" pattern on the cake with the buttons before rolling it in the grated Caramac. I was going to say "sorry if you can't get Caramac", but I remembered that I brought it on eBay...

Having cleaned the white buttons off, I measuers the centre of my cake board, added a small dob of ganache to the centre point, then slid the cake (minus any greaseproof paper) onto the cake board. I could then place that on my turntable to complete the decoration. 

Scrape all the remaining ganache onto the top of the cake and smooth it over to make a nice flat top. As you can see from my photos, I then decorated the top with hand-made chocolates (they've got to be worth a £1 each on their own, as a minimum - you try getting hand-made chocckies and see how much they are!) For those of you wondering, the round white ones are cuppacino flavour, an intense coffee hit to counterpoint the smooth creamy caramelness of the gold cake. The coffee coloured square ones are a nod to "Irish Cream Liqueur" flavour (but there was nothing Irish about the -sparing amounts of -single malt whisky I used in them!) Sorry, I didn't photograph me making them, as I did that way in advance. Perhaps another Instructable if there is the demand?

The cake board was finally slid into the assembled cake box ready to transport.

You can also see the Super-Moist Chokky cake I also made, I put a warning on the box top of that to the effect that it may contain chocolate! (Like they put a warning on the salted peanuts that they may contain traces of nuts are they are packaged in a factory handling nuts).

The other cake in the photo was a tray-bake my daughter-in-law made.

The centre raised nearly £400 for McMillan Cancer Support.

Well, you've had quite the story from me, hope you found it a good read. As a summary, I've provided this Recipe Card which tells you everything you need to know to make the cake offline. Even my wife was quite impressed with this. Hope you enjoy! Now, ready, steady, cook!