Sunday, May 19, 2013

Chocolate Brownie Meringue Cake for World Baking Day

Today is World Baking Day...last year it was 'Caking', this year it is Baking Brave. If you check out the World Baking Day website, you'll find 100 different recipe increasing in difficulty from 1 to 100. All you have to do is choose your level and then get baking!
My initial thought was to go straight to recipe 100 but then decided that it was probably actually better to pick something that I'd really enjoy baking and that other people would enjoy eating, so I plumped for level 91 which falls into the category of 'I bake, therefore I am!'. The recipe in question is a Chocolate Brownie Meringue Cake from World Baking Day Ambassador Miranda Gore-Brown who you may remember was a finalist on the Great British Bake Off. I chose this recipe as what's not to love about chocolate brownie, meringue, hazelnuts, raspberries and lashings of cream!
I'm not really a brownie aficionado but this was a really simple recipe to follow, it contains chocolate, icing sugar, margarine, eggs and flour. The brownie base was baked for 8 minutes before taking it out of the oven half cooked, at which point the hazelnut meringue was spread on top and it was then baked for a further 25 minutes.
Once the brownie and meringue was cooled the two halves were removed from their tins. In order to do this, a knife had to be run around the tin but this did give me a slightly scruffy finish. The final touch was to whip up some cream, icing sugar and raspberries to give the lovely pink layer in the middle.
I'm a bit of a baking perfectionist but I think for this one it is impossible to get a really smart finish, however the slightly dishevelled appearance is part of the charm of this cake I think! Cutting it neatly is also a bit of a challenge.
This is a lovely recipe which everyone will enjoy, it might be particular nice if you have friends with kids coming over for Sunday lunch for example. If you'd like to give it a whirl you can find Miranda's recipe here.

I'm entering this cake into this month's Calendar Cakes challenge as the theme this month is Baking Brave. So if you've baked anything for World Baking Day you can enter it here. We're also after any bakes that you have made in the month of May that are out of your comfort zone or particularly challenging and bear in mind that everyone's level of challenge is different, so whatever your own personal triumph, you're welcome to enter it into Calendar Cakes.
Calendar Cakes is hosted on alternate months here at Laura Loves Cakes and over at Dolly Bakes. You can find out the theme on the first of each month :-)

16 comments:

  1. Wowee that looks FANTASTIC and in my opinion, yours looks much better than the one in their photograph. Well done you! I could go a slice of that right now. Stunning!

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  2. I absolutely love this, gorgeously indulgent. This recipe has been on my to-do list for ages. I need an excuse to bake it!

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  3. You should definitely give it a go Jo, takes about 35 minutes and was easier than I thought it would be! :-)

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  4. That looks lovely, especially the pink layer!

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  5. Snap indeed! yours looks awesome Laura.. we have about one quarter left... savages in this house to be sure. :) it really is so good xxx

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  6. Wow this looks brilliant and sounds so yummy! A great combination of textures and flavours, and a very brave bake!

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  7. Wow!! Super! The combination of the flavors looks fantastic!

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  8. Laura this cake is AMAZING. So beautiful to look at (not untidy at all!) and I can imagine how delicious it must taste! I definitely want to give it a try. Along with most of the other World Baking Day treats. I had no idea this 'day' actually existed til yesterday... but it's an awesome idea. Thanks for sharing your recipe!

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  9. Love this cake, it looks delicious xx

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  10. for a simple cake, this looks like so much love and effort has gone into it !
    yumyumx

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  11. Totally forgot about WBD! meant to enter a bake myself. Anyhoo, This cake looks amazing!

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  12. It looks great Laura :) Good choice on baking something that you would also enjoy baking too!

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  13. That looks SO tasty! Brownies and meringue are some of my favourite desserts so to eat them together would be heaven!

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