I don’t know why but I like to surprise colleagues on their last day with baked goods.

One of my favourite colleagues had his last day on Friday and as he didn’t tell anyone yet what kind of job he’s going to do afterwards, we all kept guessing. My last guess was that he’ll be running the Empire so I thought he might need a Deathstar.

I found this How-To Video on youtube and decided to make a Chocolate Fudge Cake and decorate it.

For the Chocolate Cake:

(If you want to sandwich them together like I did, you will need to make the recipe twice

175 g softened butter

175 g brown sugar

3 eggs (beaten)

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 tsp Agave nectar (or golden syrup)

175 g flour

50 g ground almonds

1 tsp baking powder

1 pinch salt

30 g dutch processed cocoa

Line a 23cm round baking pan (or 2 if you want to sandwich the cake) with parchment paper and preheat oven to 175°C. Beat butter and sugar together in a bowl until light and fluffy. Gradually add the eggs, a litte a time, and the vanilla extract and beat well after each addition. Mix flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa and sift into the bowl and fold into the mixture. Spread dough into the cake pan and bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

Let the cake rest in the pan for 5 minutes, remove from pan and let it cool on a whire rack.

For the Chocolate Ganache (enough for 2 layers, for 1 layer make half recipe)

400 g dark chocolate

100 g cream

Melt the chocolate and stir in the cream and syrup. Let cool slightly and spread over the first cake. Sandwich second cake on top and fill the gap on the sides with chocolate ganache. Spread the rest over the top layer and the sides of the cake. Make sure you level the ganache and that the top layer of icing is around 1 cm thick. Let the cake rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

And now to the part where all the magic happens:

I use ready-to-roll fondant icing. I’ve been experimenting with it for some time and this one is easy to get at a local store and very easy to process.

Sift some icing sugar on your work surface (I use a silikon rolling matt) and roll out the fondant with a non sticking rolling pin. For a 26 cm Sandwich cake I used ca. 350 g of Fondant. The guy in the video uses his hands to smothen the fondant around the edges of the cake but I prefer a fondant smoother. I also used a modelling tool instead of a skewer but this will also work well.

And tadaaaa!