I posted a picture of licorice powder on my Facebook page and I finally got to post you what I went and did with this wonderful powder. A Licorice Mud cake! Here’s what the licorice powder looked liked and the bottle you can find it in here in Finland (a plus is that it is an eco-friendly product).
The cake consisted of two layers. Underneath was the mud cake and on top was a cream frosting. The cake was oh so good but a little too intensive for my taste so combining it with vanilla ice cream was the right move for me. I thought the licorice gave a nice little twist to the taste but it wasn’t as powerful as I would have expected.
Mud cake
200 g dark chocolate (e.g. 60%)
100 g butter
4 eggs
4 dl powdered sugar
1 tablespoon corn starch
1 tablespoon licorice powder
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
pinch of salt
In addition
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon crushed almonds<
Frosting
150 g dark chocolate
1 tablespooon butter
100 g cream cheese
1 1/2 dl whipped cream
1 tablespoon powdered sugar
1/2-1 tablespoon licorice powder
6-8 of cookies of your own choice
1. Preheat the oven to 180 celsius. Grease an 20 cm springform pan thickly with butter. Turn pan on its side, place almond crumbs in the pan and shake so crumbs stick to sides. Keep turning and add crumbs as needed until sides are well coated. Set pan upright and coat bottom of pan.
2. Carefully melt the chocolate and cut up butter, mix until smooth and let it cool.
3. Separate the egg yolks from the whites. Froth the egg whites.
4. Froth the egg yolks and powdered sugar. Combine the corn starch, licorice powder and vanilla sugar and sieve the mixture into the the egg yolks foam. then mix the butter and chocolate mixture and a pinch of salt into the foam. Then carefully mix the egg whites foam into the mixture.
5. Pour the mixture into the pan and bake for about 20 mins. The cake is still soft in the middle when taken out. It stiffens when cooled down. Let it cool down for at least 2 hours. Then take the cake out of the pan.
6. Make the frosting. Melt the chocolate and butter carefully. Let it cool down.
7. Mix the cream cheese flexible with a mixer. Froth the cream in another bowl and then mix into the cheese. Flavor the mixture with powdered sugar and licorice powder. Then add the melted chocolate.
8. Spread the frosting straight away onto the cake since it stiffens up quickly. Decorate the cake with cookies. Put the cake into the refrigerator until serving.
I would have liked to bake it in a 20 cm pan but unfortunately I had left all my pans at my cottage. I did this in something that I was not that satisfied with. Luckly there is alwys a next time! The other great thing about this cake is that since the pan is covered with almond crumbs it makes this cake totally gluten-free as well! That’s it for tonight’s cake. Something more ‘healthy’ coming up next time.
– Alina
Alina 