At the time of writing, this blog has been sat a little quiet for the last couple of months due to an ultra busy period of my life with lots of projects on for my day-to-day job (I’m a Web Designer/Developer) and I’m also currently gearing up for a move to Hove in Sussex from my native Surrey, so I really haven’t had much time to put anything on the blog since before Christmas. This has been especially galling since I’ve been stuck on 149 recipes on the site for ages and I wanted to do something special for recipe 150 because I wasn’t even sure if I would get past 10 recipes when I started up this blog a couple of years ago!
But, wait no more, because I have had the time to create recipe number 150 and it’s a doozy! It is – as you guessed from the title of the recipe – a super sized, super flavoursome, super bright Mint Chocolate Chip Aero Cake which is packed full of minty goodness in the form of four layers of mint chocolate chip cake, layers of mint buttercream icing and interspersed with chopped up Mint Aero bars and topped with Mint Aero Bubbles. This cake just naughty written all over it and it’s bound to be a hit with whomever you serve it to!
Chocolate Chip Mint Aero Cake
Print RecipeIngredients
- For the cake:
- 525g Self-Raising Flour
- 550g Caster Sugar
- 100g Cocoa Powder
- 1tsp Salt
- 1tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
- 300g Dark Chocolate Chips
- 350ml Vegetable Oil
- 5 Large Free Range Eggs
- 300ml Buttercream
- 400ml Whole Milk
- 50ml Coffee (cold)
- 1 tsp Peppermint Extract
- For the buttercream:
- 1.25kg Icing Sugar
- 500g Unsalted Butter, softened
- 6-7 tbsp Whole Milk
- Green gel food colouring
- 1/2 tsp Peppermint Extract
- 200g Mint Aero Bars (for layering)
- 200g Mint Aero Bubbles (for decoration)
Instructions
Preheat an oven to 160°C/320°F/Gas Mark 3.
In a large bowl, weigh out all of the dry ingredients for the cake (flour, sugar, cocoa powder, salt and bicarb) and combine together with a wooden spoon.
In another bowl, add all of the wet ingredients (vegetable oil, buttercream, milk, coffee, eggs and peppermint extract) and whisk together until completely combined.
Make a well in the center of the dry cake ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients, and gently fold them together with a spatula making sure they're combined and free of lumps.
Add in the chocolate chips and fold these into the cake batter as well so they're evenly distributed.
Line four 8 inch cake tins with greaseproof paper, and evenly divide the mixture into these.
Bake the cakes in the oven for 35 minutes or until you can poke a skewer into the middle of the cake and it comes out clean.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 10 - 15 minutes, then remove from the tins and leave to cool completely on wire racks.
Now, for the icing, sieve all the icing sugar into a large bowl so it's free of any lumps.
Add the softened butter to a large bowl, or a stand mixer if you have one, and beat until light and fluffy.
Add half of the icing sugar into the butter and beat it in until combined, then add the other half of the icing sugar and repeat.
Now add the milk into a glass or jug and add in the peppermint extract and a small, pea-sized amount of green food colouring into the milk and mix it together until all of colouring has combined with the milk.
Gradually beat in the coloured milk into the icing sugar and butter mixture until it's thoroughly combined and you have mint-green colour icing.
To construct your cake, firstly roughly chop all of the mint Aero bars (not the bubbles) into fairly small pieces and put to one side.
Next, trim your completely-cooled cakes so they're completely level and the same height. You can do this with a serrated knife or a cake wire cutter which is much easier and more precise.
Now, add some icing to the first layer of cake and smooth it out evenly with a palette knife. Then sprinkle over an even layer of the chopped Aero bars and pop on another layer of cake and press it down .
Repeat the last step for the next two layers of cake, then place on the top layer of cake.
Now, you'll want to crumb coat your cake. This is adding a thin layer of the buttercream icing first to seal the cake before you add a thicker layer of icing (or fondant). This make it so that your cake can be as neat as possible. If you want a quick video to show you how to do this, check out this video from Edd Kimber. Once you've done your crumb coating layer, pop the cake in the fridge for about half an hour to an hour.
Remove your cake from the fridge and completely coat it with the rest of the buttercream.
Once you're happy, decorate the top of the cake with the Aero Bubbles however you like and serve to your super-impressed friends because this is a huge cake made specifically for sharing!
