Saturday was my daughter Lyla’s second birthday and to celebrate I created a special Bunny cake using a Gluten Free Chocolate Cake recipe.
Now I wanted to tell you Lyla doesn’t have any diet restrictions, but there were three people (including me) who required a Gluten Free Diet. So with that in mind, I chose to create a Gluten Free version of Yotam Ottolenghi’s Chocolate Cake recipe reported as the Worlds Best Chocolate Cake. I also used a Chocolate Buttercream recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction’s for the filling between the 2½ layers of chocolate cake and topped it off with fondant. The end result was this rather tall cake that required over 50cm of fondant and the purchase of an extra large rolling pin amongst other equipment. I created all the features of the bunny by hand too without any stencils!
I’m super proud of how the Bunny cake turned out having only decorated a cake using fondant once before, for Lyla’s epic first birthday party. Given how delicious the chocolate cake was and the fact it didn’t require a stand mixer or more than 2 bowls, I thought it was my responsibility to share the cake recipe with you all!
Thanks for stopping by!
Amanda
- 250 g unsalted butter, cut into 2cm cubes
- 200 g dark chocolate, chopped into 2cm pieces ( I used Calleabut dark chocolate - 55% cocoa solids)
- 1½ tsp instant coffee granules, dissolved in 350ml boiling water
- 250 g sugar
- 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 240 g gluten free self-raising flour
- 30 g dutch processed cocoa powder
- ¼ tsp salt
Preheat oven to 170°C and line and grease a 20-centimetre round cake tin with margarine/butter and baking paper.
In a large heatproof bowl, combine the butter, chocolate and hot coffee, and mix until everything is melted, combined and smooth. Whisk in sugar by hand until dissolved. Add eggs and vanilla extract to chocolate mixture and whisk again until thoroughly combined and smooth.
Sift flour, cocoa powder and salt together into a large bowl. Then whisk these dry ingredients into the chocolate mixture. The batter will be very liquid based but this is as expected.
Pour the cake mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 1 hour, or until the cake is cooked and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean/with only a few dry crumbs. Leave the cake to cool for 20 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to completely cool. The top of the cake may crack a little but this is also to be expected.