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You are here: Recipes > Steam Engine Chocolate Cake

Steam Engine Chocolate Cake

My first ever carved cake. Created for a friend as a replica of his steam engine.

Recipe by Rebecca Neave

Uploaded by

Time to make

Skill Level

Intermediate

Serves

12 people

Baking ingredients

  • 225 g Softened butter
  • 410 g Caster sugar
  • 4 Large eggs
  • 90 g Self Raising flour

Decorating ingredients

  • 280 g Plain flour
  • 1.5 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
  • 90 g Cocoa powder
  • 300 ml Full cream milk
  • 45 ml Malt vinegar
  • 1 kg Renshaw Lincoln green ready to roll icing
  • 50 g Royal icing, coloured grass green
  • 200 g Renshaw chocolate sugarpaste (to cover base board)

Instructions

Step 1

Make the cake in the usual way. Combine the milk and vinegar. Beat together the butter and sugar, add the eggs and beat well. Add all the other ingredients (including the milk and vinegar mixture) and mix well. Bake in a large tray tin at 160 degrees, fan oven. It takes about 40 minutes.

Step 2

(My husband made a raised base board for the cake to rest on, in the shape on the engine) Cut and stack the cake onto the base using vanilla buttercream and crumb coat. Chill well and then carve the shape to make the round front section, and the lowered seat section. Cover in buttercream and smooth then chill again.

Step 3

Roll out the green sugarpaste and cover the cake. Smooth the sugarpaste to follow the contours of the cake. Make round sugar cookies to use as the wheels and cover in more sugarpaste. Use black airbrush colour to add the highlights and accents. Indent little holes to resemble bolt holes, particularly around the front of the engine. Add a black funnel using a skewer covered in black sugarpaste. Add the finishing touches, like the stripes and the name of the engine. Pipe the green royal icing using a grass tip around the base of the engine to resemble tufts of grass. Add a small tool box and oil can to indicate that tinkering with the engine is his hobby. I made the cake from a photo I was given of the real steam engine. I then researched the type of engine in order to find out how it looked from different angles.