New Fat Ladies

The second cake S-J whipped up recently was an orange Fruit Tingle cake. My absolute favourite lolly made into cake form? YES PLEASE! I helped a bit with the frosting and construction of this one, saying helpful things like MOAR TINGLES! and dancing around with excitement as it grew ever higher. This was my birthday cake, and I’m pretty sure I’ll never love a cake as much as I loved this one.

This cake was perfection in the exact form that it was originally blogged in by the creative and delicious mind of Raspberri Cupcakes and so we copied it fairly word for word, except of course that we are the New Fat Ladies and so therefore it needed MOAR LAYERS and also MOAR TINGLES IN MY MOUTH (and in the frosting). I even liked the way it was simply decorated, because, MOAR CANDY. Too make it even more delightful, the very clever Essie made me some Washi tape bunting and it was so adorable I nearly cried. We made 2.5 x the recipe below to get the giant cake.

Fruit Tingle Cake (or, happiness in your mouth)
from Raspberri Cupcakes

Orange Cake
(adapted from The Cooks Companion, by Stephanie Alexander)

1 1/2 large oranges
3 eggs
165g unsalted butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
300g self-raising flour

Preheat oven to 190C or 180C for fancy fan forced ovens. Grease the base and dust with flour three 20cm round baking tins. You can also line with baking paper if you prefer.

Zest and juice an orange – you want to end up with about a 1/2 cup of juice, top up with bottled juice if you need to.

Combine all cake ingredients in a food processor and blend for 2 minutes. If you have extra time and are worried about over-mixing the flour, blend the orange juice and zest, butter, sugar and eggs together first for one minute, then add the flour and blend for another minute. Split the batter into three equal portions (I used a scale to measure it exactly), and pour into prepared tins. Shake the mixture out to the edges to ensure a smooth top. Bake in the oven for 12 – 15 minutes or until golden and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool in tin for 5 minutes and then carefully remove and cool cake on wire rack completely.

To make your life easier, refridgerate (or even freeze) your cakes overnight, then slice their tops off to make a flat surface the next day before frosting. Cold cakes are WAY easier to work with that warm and crumbly ones.

a million g butter
1.5 kg icing sugar, sifted
9 rolls Fruit Tingles (Steph at Raspberri Cupcakes gives options for other candies, but honestly for me, it’s Fruit Tingles or bust)
2 tbsp orange juice

Extra Fruit Tingles to decorate the top

When all cakes are completely cool, start preparing the icing by removing the salted butter from the fridge 30 mins before starting. Add the butter in a large mixing bowl and beat until smooth and fluffy with an electric mixer on high. Gradually add icing sugar with the mixer on medium, then when it is combined beat on high until light and fluffy. As always with frosting, lots of factors come into play and you may need to adjust the icing sugar/liquid ratio to get the right frosting consistency.

Crush fruit tingles in a food processor by pulsing until you have tiny pieces. We left ours with a mixture of bigger bits and crushed dust – this lead to tasty mouth explosions of Tingles, but made it harder to frost the cake with. Pick your poison.

Beat the pulverised tingles (and dust!) into the icing until even.

Smear a little frosting onto your cardboard or serving plate before putting the first cake down, this helps to anchor the plate/stops the cake from sliding around. Start to layer the cakes, using about 1/2 cup of frosting per layer.

Tip: before you cover the outside, insert 3 – 5 skewers down through all the layers. This will ensure that the layers won’t slip around as you transport it.

Use the remaining icing t0 cover the entire cake, smoothing out with a spatula or palette knife. Top cake with extra fruit tingles and chill for at least 20 mins to set the icing. Serve at room temperature.

This cake can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for several days.

Five lovely layers!