Ingredients

The Sponge

4 large free-range eggs

100g caster sugar

100g self-raising flour (OR 100g plain flour + 1 tsp baking powder)

3x 8 inch tins

The Filling

600g-800g Mascarpone cheese (2-3 tubs depending on the size you can get)

Coffee Liqueur OR strong instant coffee (100ml boiling water with 2 heaped tbsp of coffee in)

100ml heavy cream

500g icing sugar

The Decoration

100g dark chocolate (melted)

OR

200g dark chocolate

100ml heavy cream (optional)

1x piping bag with a small holed nozzle

1x piping bag with (wilton 1M preferred)

1x crank handle palate knife (to smooth down the chocolate)

Method

Weigh your bowl/stand mixer bowl. Keep note of what it weighs.

Whip up your eggs and sugar in a bowl until doubled in size and thick. The beaters should make a trail that disappears slowly when dragged through. Slowly add your flour, sieved if possible. Stir this in with a metal spoon in a figure of 8 direction until the flour is combined. Do this gently, you don’t want to knock out all the air.

Pour evenly into 3 separate, lined, 8 inch cake tins. Bake at 350f/185c/gas 4 until they spring back to the touch (10-15 mins approx) The easiest way to split them is to put your bowl on a scale, take off the pre-weighed bowl amount from before, and divide what is left by 3. For example, the bowl weighs 1kg, the total now says 1600g. Take off 1kg, leaving 600g. Divide by 3. 200g should go into each tin. Oh maths, who would have thought that would come back to haunt me.

Leave your cakes to cool on a wire rack and make the filling.

Whip up your mascarpone cheese, add 1/2 the icing sugar, the heavy cream, 30ml coffee liqueur/coffee and whip until runny. Add in the remaining icing sugar and whip until it becomes a thick cream capable of holding itself together. If this isnt happening after 5 mins, add 100g of icing sugar. Then add additional 50g every 2 mins until it does. You shouldn’t need much more- but it all depends on the ingredients and how they feel that day.

Take your base cake, drench it in coffee liqueur/coffee, spread on the mascarpone to 1/2cm thick. Add the next cake layer. Drench in coffee liqueur/coffee, spread on the mascarpone to 1/2cm thick. Add the top layer. Spread on some more mascarpone mix and spread this down the sides. You may want to transfer this onto your display dish at this time so you avoid messing it up after.

Once you have suitably covered the cake so you can’t see any more sponge on the sides/top, take your piping bag of mascarpone mix and pipe a decorative swirl around the edge. You can also do piped peaks, or whatever you wish, as long as there is a “moat.”

This next part is up to you, I like chocolate in my coffee so I added dark chocolate, but you can stop there- maybe use some dark sugar in the middle to decorate, or dust with icing sugar/cocoa powder.

If you are going for the chocolate- though mine is just chocolate, I would recommend making it a ganache so its easier to cut. I found once the chocolate hardened it crushed the cake when cutting into it. Oops!

Make your ganache by melting the chocolate, and then adding the heavy cream. Whip this until thick. Smooth onto your cake.

Take 100g of dark chocolate and melt this on a double boiler (or in the microwave carefully in 10 second bursts). Put into a piping bag with a small nozzle, and drizzle over and around the edge of the cake. Use your palate knife to smooth the chocolate into the mascarpone mix on the side to create a fun effect. (See pictures below)