Chocolate Mint Zebra Cake

Or as my son rightly pointed out "triangular prism cake" 

This cake is amazing. I absolutely love it, reminded me of what I would imagine a mint flavoured cadbury mini roll tasting like, but better - much, much better! My husband mentioned missing some triangular shaped chocolate cake and proceeded to show me a picture of one. Looked just like this but had whipping cream between the layers. Now, I have yet to find a vegan whipping cream that tastes good on it's own so decided to go for a mint frosting between the layers. It really does give this an 'after eight' flavour -sublime! My first instinct was to cover it in a ganache but when he explained that it's usually a hard chocolate covering decided to go for it. So glad I did, forgot how much I love crisp chocolate over cake. In a way I wish I hadn't made this as I will have to make it again and again.....oh, and it's a bit of a bitch to make!

About that, I really had intended on this being the practise run then I would make it again taking loads of photos of all the complicated steps for you. Alas, these are all the photos I have, I'm sure when I do make it again I'll get more for you but it was just too yummy not to post right away. So bear with me and I'll try my best to talk you through the assembly :-)

Cake:

150g plain flour

120g caster sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

25g cocoa powder

1 1/4 tsp vanilla

65ml vegetable oil

2 1/4 tsp apple cyder vinegar

190ml cold water

Mint Frosting:

40g vegetable fat (shortening) room temperature

265g icing sugar

1/2 tsp mint extract

2-3 Tbsp dairy free milk, I used rice.

Chocolate Coating:

220g dark vegan chocolate

3 tsp vegetable oil

You will need one 7" x 11" jelly roll pan - grease the sides and line the base with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 190C. In a large bowl mix all the dry ingredients together. In another bowl or pyrex measuring cup mix all the liquid ingredients together. Pour the wet into the dry and whisk well, until smooth. Pour into the prepared jelly roll pan and bake in a preheated oven for about 25 minutes. It should be coming away from the sides and bounce back on top. Remove from the oven and let cool on a rack for 10 minutes, then invert onto the rack to fully cool. Remove the baking paper.

Once the cake is fully cool, trim the hard edges away with a sharp serrated knife. Eat them ;-) Now slice the cake into 4 equal pieces widthways (not the long way). Now make your frosting. Beat the fat until soft then add some of the sugar and the mint extract. Alternate sugar and milk until all is added, you should have a thick but softly spreadable frosting. If not, add more milk and or sugar until you do.

Assembly:

Place one of the cake slices on a large plate and spread with some of the frosting, repeat with all the slices but do not frost the top of the cake. Make sure you have a bit of frosting left over.Wrap your 4 layered cake up in cling film and chill for 2 -3 hours. Remove the cling film and if it needs any trimming to even it up do - make sure you use a sharp serrated knife. Now it gets complicated. Stand the cake up so it's standing tall and using the same knife cut it diagonally in half. Place both sides on a plate and match up both long flat ends so that the frosting layers all line up. You will need to frost the 2 sides together. You should now have something that looks like the above - a triangular prism. It won't be very tidy at this point and the 2 sides may not look very together - that's ok. Wrap it tightly in cling film and place back in the fridge for 2 - 3 hours. 

Coating:

Place the chopped chocolate and vegetable oil together in a large bowl and place on top of a pot of water. Bring the water to the boil and melt the chocolate and oil together. When all melted, remove the bowl from the heat and let cool. You will not be able to pour this over the cake until it thickens up quite a bit. Don't be surprised if this takes awhile - up to an hour even. Keep stirring it now and again to check it's not getting too thick. You want to spoon it over the cake without losing most of the chocolate. When it's ready take the cake out of the fridge and unwrap. Place it on it's side on a plate with the bottom showing. Spoon the chocolate first over the bottom so that it is covered. Pop it back into the fridge to quickly set the bottom. When it's hard remove from the fridge and place the cake the right side up on the plate and spoon the chocolate over the rest of the cake. Make sure it fully covers all areas, including the front sides. When all covered, pop it back into the fridge (no cling film!) and leave it to fully set.

After about an hour it should be nice and crisp, remove from the fridge about 1/2 hour before slicing so it's easier to slice through the chocolate. You should get anywhere from 8 - 12 slices from this, depending on how big you slice :-) Hopefully I'll get back to this post soon with some step by step photos, I'm sure it won't be long till I make it again ;-)

Post now featured on Lisa's Sweets for Saturday! 

♥

Tweet

Pin It