ORIGINAL SURPRISE INSIDE BATMAN CAKE created for the July Daring Baker’s Challenge, Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to bake a cake. But not just any cake; she asked us to add in a special surprise for our eyes as well as our taste buds!
I loved the Daring Baker Challenge this month! I haven’t been able to participate in the challenges in the past year but I am committed this year! This particular challenge really excited me!! Who doesn’t love surprises? Better yet, one inside a delicious cake??
In April I made a surprise inside cake for my Father’s Birthday, with vertical layers and you can find the post here for the “how-to” for the Vertical Layer Cake, but I wanted to something even more exciting for this challenge! After thinking about it for a few days I decided that this was a great reason to bake a special cake for Mr K! For our wedding, I really really wanted to have a groom’s cake made! Unfortunately for so many reasons, I couldn’t make it happen & I decided that one day I will make it up to him with a surprise groom’s cake at a later date! So why not with this cake? SO I MADE THIS SURPRISE INSIDE BATMAN CAKE for him now!!
I came up with this idea by myself, because I wanted to emulate the Bat signal! The ever popular beam of light sent to the sky to call Batman when he is needed!
I have always wanted to attempt the twice baked cake ever since I saw this cake with the most adorable dot pattern inside. I am Baker is a GREAT website for ALL KINDS of surprise inside cake ideas!!
Why Batman? Mr K is an avid fan of superheroes! His favourite is the Hulk, (which is what the groom’s cake was going to be) but he likes ‘The Dark Knight’ too! For my first time, I thought batman was going to be an easier pattern to tackle!!
Today’s post is a “How-to” more than a recipe! Mostly because you don’t need a recipe for this cake… I made this with my favourite basic cake recipe, and chocolate cake recipe. (However, IF and ONLY IF you are pressed for time… you can use boxed cake mixes and frosting… but please don’t tell anyone I said so!!)
I missed my cake decorating tools so much though! I am waiting for my items to be shipped here from Australia, and had to make do with limited tools to make this happen! The decorating wasn’t the best, but pretty psyched I did something without any proper fondant tools!
One point to remember is that when doing a cake like this you have to wait till the cake is cut open to find out if it worked out! The wait is nerve-wrecking! I wasn’t sure if I was the one who was more excited or Mr K!
The Big Reveal!!!
YES!!! it worked!! I can actually see the batman sign in the cake!!
So here is the How-to for the Batman Cake (with a Surprise Inside).
Batman Sign Inside & Out Cake!
You will need
1 quantity of chocolate cake (For a loaf pan)
1 can or about 1/2 cup of home made buttercream frosting (chocolate)
2 quantities of vanilla cake/yellow cake/white layer cake (Anything you prefer)
Black and Yellow gel colouring
Yellow chocolate ganache (Made with 3:1 ratio of white chocolate and cream melted together and yellow colouring mixed in)
Batman cookie cutter
Black buttercream frosting OR Black fondant to cover
Once you have made the chocolate cake batter, mix in some black colouring to make the colour as dark as possible. (It doesn’t become jet black in colour – I used americolour black gel colouring).
Bake the chocolate cake in the loaf pan that you will be using for the final cake. When it was cool to handle, crumble it and mix in some of the frosting (Enough for cake pop consistency).
Press the mixture into a half sheet pan and chill it. Cut out enough batman shapes, and stack them up until it is the length that would fit inside the loaf pan. Reserve the leftover cake bits. You may need it to fix any mistakes!
OR bake the cake in a sheet pan (like below) and cut out the batman logos out to form a stacked “logo log” or “tower” the length of the cake pan you will be baking the yellow cake in.
Chill the batman cutout “tower” overnight in the fridge.
Make the other cake batter and mix in yellow colouring (this needs to be vibrant).
Pour in a little of the batter to cover the bottom of the loaf pan and place the batman “tower” inside (I placed it topside down).
Cover the Batman shapes from all sides and the top with the cake batter.
Bake the rest of the batter separately in another cake pan. I knew there was a possibility of the batman sinking to the bottom so I had some left over “chocolate cake crumbs” that I kept separately.
Once the cake is baked (skewer comes out clean) let it cool for about 10 minutes and turn it out to a baking rack to cool. (Same with the other cake as well)
I was correct in assuming the batman logo will sink to the bottom, because it did!! It took Batman’s ears!! After some fixing with extra cake crumbs… it was ok!! 🙂 (I used the extra cake crumbs leftover from cutting out the Batman Cutouts)
This doesn’t always happen – but it’s always good to have extra cake as a back up! Right?
Let the cake set in the fridge for at least 15 minutes.
Cover with ganache, and add more layers to the side and top of the cake. Chill and shape the cake.
Also you can crumble the yellow cake and mix in some WHITE frosting or ganache to get the cake pop consistency and you can shape the cake with this. Let this chill.
Cover with another thin layer of ganache and cover with black fondant!
You can decorate however you like!
It was really lovely to cut into the cake and see how it turned out but let’s be honest! The real test was the taste test… right?
I’m happy to report the cake definitely met expectations! The cake was beautiful! The chocolate cake wasn’t dry… in fact it was amazing! 🙂
For next time, I may skip the black colouring and go with dark cocoa to get the dark colour, but other than that I absolutely loved the cake!!
It was such an amazing experience to make this, and it was great surprising my husband with this cake too!
Thank you so much Ruth for a phenomenal Challenge!!
I hope you try a surprise inside cake for a special occasion! There’s so many ideas that you can use to surprise people when they cut into your cake! Have you made one? Tell me about it below!
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Till next time! 🙂
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