It was my daughter’s 30th birthday on Saturday. She had a party at my place. The theme was ‘gold’. This turned out to be a great idea because everybody glittered. My son in law indulged his camp side and wore gold and black sequin trousers and a gold necklace. He looked like a mix between Russell Brand and Morrissey. I’m here for it. I love it when men dress up. My granddaughter wore a gold dress too.
My daughter hired a mixologist. He made cocktails all night, using my babycham glasses. I think we went through seven bottles of tequila. His Margaritas, Porn Star Martinis and Pina Coladas were amazing. I drank four and so was very hung over the next day. I’m a lightweight.
I made the food: mini pizzette, mini poppy seed bagels with smoked salmon and cream cheese and a really stupid gold and white caterpillar cake using four Swiss rolls, a lot of white chocolate and a booklet of gold sheets. I *think* they were edible. Whatevs.
Cuthbert the giant caterpillar cake
The inspiration for this was the scene in Motherland when the single mum (played by Diane Morgan) dryly told the over-anxious mum (Anna Maxwell Martin, who I find SO irritating in this), to calm down when organising a children's party: “You buy four caterpillar cakes from ASDA, put them together in one long human centipede-type caterpillar cake, then just let the kids help themselves. Don’t even bother with a knife just let them dig their creepy little fingers in.” Her idea of games was throw a pound coin into the room and let the kids fight it out.A caterpillar cake is basically a Swiss roll. Of course being a masochist I made all the caterpcakes from scratch. I made four to make a giant caterpillar to feed 60 guests. For a small caterpillar cake, you only need to make one Swiss roll.Here you have a choice of cake base, either plain, or you can add flavourings such as lemon zest or spices.The other Swiss roll recipe is a banana one. If you are making a four roll giant caterpillar, double the quantities of the buttercream and the ganache recipes.
Serves 60
Ingredients
For the plain cake:
- 5 eggs
- 175 g caster sugar
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- Flavourings of your choice: a spice, or lemon zest
- 100 g plain flour
For the banana cake alternative:
- 130 g caster sugar
- 2 very ripe bananas, mashed up
- 1 tsp vanilla paste
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp fine salt
- 2 tsps spice of your choice: cinnamon, all spice, nutmeg, clove or a combination
- 100 g plain flour
For the chocolate buttercream:
- 175 g salted butter, room temperature
- 175 g icing sugar
- 3 tbsps nutella or chocolate spread ( I used a high quality Italian buffalo chocolate spread from https://www.tenutavannulo.com/en/ )
For the white chocolate ganache:
- 450 g good quality white chocolate
- 250 ml double cream
For decoration:
- Sheets edible gold leaf
- white chocolate buttons
- 1 box white chocolate finger biscuits
- Colin the caterpillar head
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180C
- Grease and line a flat Swiss roll tin or baking tin with parchment paper . I did four cakes so did them one after the other. The parchment paper will also be used to roll up the cake, so use this rather than a silpat.
For the plain cake:
- Whisk the eggs and sugar in a stand mixer for around 8 minutes until doubled in size, pale and frothy. When you lift the whisk, the mixture should trail like a ribbon.
- Add the flavourings, baking powder, salt. You could replace 40g of the sugar with cocoa powder if you wanted a chocolate flavoured sponge.
- Fold in the flour carefully, making sure it is evenly distributed.
- Spread the mixture carefully and evenly onto the baking tin parchment
- Bake for 10 to 12 minutes until springy to the touch
- Remove from the oven and turn over the Swiss roll, carefully peeling off the parchment paper
- Using the same parchment paper, roll up the Swiss roll and leave to cool
For the banana cake:
- Beat the eggs and sugar in a stand mixer for 8 minutes until doubled in size, pale and frothy.
- Add the flavourings such as vanilla or spices, then baking powder and salt
- Fold the flour in carefully. It will tend to sink to the bottom so stir gently but deeply. Try not to deflate your airy cake mixture.
- With the rubber spatula, spread it evenly over the baking tin/swiss roll tin, right up to the edges. (If the edges and corners are thinner, they tend to bake more quickly or even burn).
- Bake for 10 to 12 minutes until springy to the touch.
- Remove from the oven, and turn over the cake. Carefully peel off the parchment paper.
- Using the parchment paper, carefully roll up the cake and leave to cool.
For the chocolate buttercream icing:
- Beat all the ingredients together.
- Once the Swiss roll has cooled, open up the cake and using a spatula, spread the chocolate buttercream all over the inside.
Adding the buttercream:
- Then once the cake is re-rolled, cut and assembled, use the rest of the buttercream over the outside of the cake - a crumb coat- so it will be easier to pour the ganache over it.
- Once cooled, roll it out again. You want to make the ridged back of the caterpillar so cut thick (2.5cm) strips about a third of the way through. Remove these strips of cake. (Some people use them to make the legs but I used chocolate finger biscuits for the legs and gave the strips to my granddaughter to eat)
- Chill the cake in the fridge in readyness for the ganache stage.
For the white chocolate ganache:
- Break up the chocolate into squares and place in a heat-proof bowl
- Melt over a bain-marie or blast for 30 seconds in a micro-wave. Never go over 30 seconds. Do it a couple of times.
- Once chocolate is melted, pour in the cream and stir.
- If the chocolate starts to harden, give it a 5 second blast in the microwave.
- With the help of a rubber spatula, pour over the butter creamed ,rolled up Swiss roll.
For the decoration:
- With a paint brush or pastry brush, carefully drape the gold leaf over the body of the caterpillar cake until covered.
- Add chocolate buttons to the top and white chocolate fingers to each side (pushing them in slightly) for the legs.
- Finally, using the left over buttercream, wedge the Colin head in one end.
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