The Chocolate, Brandy and Coffee Tower by Gemma Patford


This weekend I definitely need a gloriously big and delicious chocolate cake to celebrate the beginning of autumn, where the fog returns, the air cools and the leaves begin blushing, so we returned to the wonderful Gemma Patford, who shared her decadent chocolate orange tart with us over here earlier this summer.

Gemma is wonderfully creative and her home doubles as her studio, where she makes her beautiful baskets and more importantly, her cakes!

The Chocolate, brandy and coffee Tower cake , or ‘The Tree Log’ has become one of my all-time favourite cakes to make, she tells us, and it is quickly becoming ours as well.

Gemma first tasted this cake at her dear friend Victoria’s 30th Birthday. Her almost sister-in-law Tina had made this for her to celebrate her age milestone. Tina and her fiancé Alex run a beautiful bed and breakfast (The Diggers Store) in Castlemaine, Victoria, and Tina bakes all the bread, preserves the jams and tends after their chickens. Definitely a place after our own heart.

Gemma´s adaption of Tina’s cake came about when she was looking for a recipe for her wedding cake. This cake is dense enough to support many layers, and is moist enough to make it 4 – 5 days in advance, which is pretty great as there´s nothing worse than a great chocolate cake drying up too soon.

So if you´re looking for something special this Sunday, this might just be the cake you´ve been waiting for.

Enjoy, and Happy Sunday!

The Cake

¾ cup of filtered coffee

½ cup Brandy

175 grams of good quality dark chocolate

250 grams unsalted butter

1 ½ cup castor sugar

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla essence

Preheat your oven to 140 C and line the bottom of the cake tin with baking paper.

In a heavy saucepan, bring the coffee, brandy and sugar to a simmer. When the sugar has dissolved, add the chocolate and butter. Whisk until smooth and remove from the heat. Let the mixture cool and whisk in the eggs and vanilla.

In a large bowl, sift together flour and baking soda.

Using a stand mixer, add the wet ingredient to the dry ingredients. Mix for 1 minute, while scraping down the sides.

Pour the mixture into your cake tin and bake for 1 hour to 1 ½ hours.

Let the cake cool for 10 minutes before attempting to remove it from the tin, and cool on a wire rack.

Bakers notes:

This recipe makes 1 cake in a 23cm tin. The cake in the image used 4 cakes.

The crumb coat

375 grams of unsalted butter (room temperature)

5 cups of pure icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 tbs whole milk

In a stand mixer, whip the butter and vanilla for approximately 5 minutes or until it is pale and smooth. Slowly alternately add the icing sugar and milk. Mix until light and fluffy.

Bakers Notes:

For this cake, you will need to make at least three separate batches of this icing recipe. My recommendation is not to try and double it. Make extra batches as you need it.

Chocolate Frosting

½ cup of good quality cocoa powder

½ cup boiling water

225g unsalted butter (room temperature)

½ cup pure icing sugar

¼ tsp salt

300 grams of good quality dark chocolate (melted and cooled)

Combine cocoa and the boiling water, stirring until cocoa has dissolved.

In a stand mixer, whip the butter, icing sugar, and salt until pale and smooth.

Reduce speed to low. Add melted and cooled chocolate, beating until combined and scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in the cocoa mixture. Mix for 1 minute.

Putting it all together

Take all four cakes and cut off the top dome to make each cake nice and flat and even. You may even wish to cut each cake in half again.

Spoon a dollop of butter cream icing on your cake tray.

Flip your first cake upside down so that the nice flat bottom is facing upwards and place it in the centre of your cake tray.

Take a big scoop of your icing and start to

crumb coat your cake.

Place the next cake on top, ice and repeat until your cake is filled and crumb coated.

Place your cake in the fridge and let set for approximately 40 minutes.

Once the icing on your cake is firm to the touch, you are ready to decorate your cake.

Using a long spatula, take a large dollop of your dark chocolate frosting and start working the icing onto the sides of the cake. A good tip to remember is your icing spatula should only touch icing, never the cake.

Once your cake is entirely covered in icing, with a clean spatula, starting from the bottom, wipe the icing upwards and work your way around the entire cake. Don’t worry about it looking too neat. This is not one of those cakes.

You will have some excess icing around the top. Clean your spatula again, and working from the sides of the cake, slowly wipe the icing inwards. This method gives you a nice clean edge.

Work with the icing until you have the desired decorative effect.

Clean the edges of your cake tray with a warm wash cloth.

Bakers notes:

Decorate on the plate you intend to display the cake on. This baby is heavy. Once it is iced, and decorated, there is no hope in moving it.

If you are making a tall cake, it is worth using ‘stack and support’ layering. Stack and support layers ensure that the top layers of the cake do not crush the bottom layers. You can easily support the bottom layers of your cake by inserting 3 drinking straws, 2 cm apart, into the centre, of your cake, cutting them to size then placing a 5cm in diameter cardboard circle on top of the straws. This will help disperse the weight of the top layers and also help with the structural integrity of your cake.

Images by Stephanie Stematis

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