Chocolate and Vanilla Schichttorte - Great Bloggers Bake Off 2014

This week was a hard choice. I will be honest I really did not know what to bake. I changed my mind half a dozen times until I finally settled on the schichttorte.

This year I have enjoyed the challenge of doing the technical bakes and pushing myself.

I was amazed when I looked at the original recipe by Paul Hollywood that it contained 10 eggs! So I have reduced the amount of eggs and put my own twist on this new cake. As it was the first time that I have ever baked a cake like this I was excitedly nervous watching it cook.

You can  find the original recipe here.

This is what I did...

Schichttorte

Ingredients

Cake

8 eggs, separated
80g baking spread
120g caster sugar
120g plain flour
50g cornflour
1/2 tsp vanilla paste
25g cocoa powder

Topping

150mls double cream
1/2 tsp vanilla paste
10g dark chocolate, grated

Method

1 - Before you start weigh a large mixing bowl and the bowl of a freestanding electric mixer and make a note of their empty weight, you will need this later!

2 - Place the egg whites in a bowl of a mixer and whisk until they make stiff peaks and the bowl can be held upside down

3 - While the egg whites are mixing whisk the egg yolks until light coloured, thick and creamy

4 - In another bowl cream together the baking spread and caster sugar together

5 - Mix in the egg yolks

6 - Sift in the plain flower and cornflour and mix thoroughly

7 - Gently fold in the egg whites a quarter at a time

8 - Weigh all of the mixture and take off the weight of the bowl, divide the mixture into 2 equal measures using the 2 bowls that you weighed

9 - In one bowl add the vanilla paste and in the other bowl sift in the cocoa powder and mix

10 - Grease a 20cms cake tin, line the bottom and grease the side

11 - Turn the grill on to a high heat

12 - Weigh each of the bowls of mixture, after taking away the weight of the bowl divide the mixture weight by 10 and this will tell you how much mixture you will need to weigh for each layer

13 - Starting with a vanilla layer weigh out the required amount and place under the grill for 2 minutes

14 - Remove and place on the scales and weigh out the required amount of chocolate mixture, place under the grill for 2 minutes

15 - Keep repeating this process until you have 20 layers, as the cake gets taller you will need to reduce the grilling time gradually by 10 seconds each time

16 - When all the layers have been baked leave to cool for 5 minutes in the tin before gently removing, you my need to slide a pallet knife around the sides to loosen

17 - Finish cooling on a cooling rack before adding the topping

18 - For the cake covering whip the cream with the vanilla paste until thick

19 - Cover the cake with the cream using a pallet knife

20 - Once the cake is covered in the vanilla cream sprinkle the grated chocolate over the top and serve

This cake was so much easier than I expected. I will definitely be baking more flavour variations of the cake. I love the stripes in the middle and this cake has certainly impressed when served.

As always I am joining in with Mummy Mishaps - Great Bloggers Bake Off and Supergolden Bakes - My Great #GBBO Bake Along and Supergolden Bakes - #CookBlogShare and Casa Costello - Bake of the Week.