Geology Cake

Geology rocks! It is the schist!
Seriously, geologists have their "faults", but rock collecting was once a little hobby of mine. So hope you have a good "apatite" because this rich cake is full of tasty nuggets of precious ingredients!

The inception of this cake started when I recently came across a fabulous blog and video channel from the talented Ann Reardon. I came across her YouTube channel quite randomly, but her channel is bursting with a wide range of easy to follow techniques that are quite inventive and different. I particularly like her recent Instagram surpise cake.
When I spotted her edible candy geode recipe, I thought it was just brilliant, and as well as looking like it was relatively simple to make, it took me right back to the rock and fossil collecting of my youth. Anyone who has been to our house can see the remnants of this hobby in the bathroom, where I keep an amethyst geode fragment with lots of other little shells and fossils for decoration. I knew at once that I had to incorporate it into my next cake, and since it was my birthday coming up, I just knew this would be perfect for me! And if you love geology themed baking as much as me, you might also like to check out the recipe for my awesome ammonite fudge!

So far, I have only managed to find one other website that has a recipe for how to make a fully edible geode - and you would know from reading this blog that this is one of my key aims in all my cakes, to make sure everything that looks good enough to eat, really is. I'm still surprised that this recipe isn't more widespread on the internet, when it is so inventive and cool! It is so simple as well, just mix one part water to three parts sugar, then place over a high heat. Once it is dissolved, cook at a rolling boil for one minute, then reduce the heat until it thickens a little. Then add any food colouring of flavouring that you want, because it dissolves more easily while it's hot. After that, cover the saucepan with plastic wrap and leave to cool for several hours, or until it has reached room temperature, before pouring the cooled syrup into a bowl, with icing for an icing geode, or just into a bowl with foil, to cover with chocolate once it's set.

So first, I tried to do Ann's "chocolate" method, where you just pour the sugar syrup into the foiled bowl, and wait for the magic to happen. Unfortunately, the magic didn't happen for me - not on the first try, or the second try either. I just got a few bits of crystals free-floating in the solution. So in the end, I gave up, and concluded that the sugar just didn't want crystallise on the bare surface of the aluminium, so I tried a compromise of the fondant (icing) method. This method worked straight away, because the presence of already crystallised sugar in the icing encourages the dissolved sugar molecules to settle and crystallise on it too.

If you're wondering what to do with the leftover sugar syrup, fear not! there are many applications that it can be put to. You can heat it up and pour candy for yourself, á la the Elizabeth le Bau method for the Breaking Bad "crystal meth", or do as I did, which was convert it into a yummy purple fudge by boiling it with cream for 20 minutes, as in this awesome old-fashioned fudge recipe. I simply adjusted the volume of cream to accommodate for the fact that I had already added water to the sugar to make the syrup.

I followed the rest of Ann's recipe, but instead of two layers of different coloured icing, I just did one layer of white icing, and then once it dried, I covered it with the white chocolate and cocoa powder mix as Ann suggested for the chocolate version, to get some of the chocolately goodness in!  (I do find that too much icing/fondant can be a bit overpowering). Then I sprinkled it with custard cream crumbs to get that dusty, rocky effect.

While leaving the chocolate to set, I baked a cake base to decorate with my new geode. I baked one of my favourite recipes - raspberry and white chocolate blondies from Olive magazine, which I'm sad to say is no longer available on the website. It was my go to recipe for blondies, as it is rich and flavourful, and I wish I'd written it down. It uses browned butter and melted white chocolate, but other than that, goes mainly like a regular brownie recipe. Admittedly, it was a little too rich for the purposes of this cake, what with all the icing decorations on top, not least because I also pimped it up by adding some chopped pecans. However, it was my birthday, so what better time for self-indulgence! You can use any cake in any shape for your base though, probably a regular sponge cake would be better!

Then I set about creating a rugged landscape on top of the blondie base where one might go hunting for these types of geodes.
First, I put a green buttercream base on to cover the whole of the cake, although I think next time, I'd probably go for chocolate or caramel butter cream, to give a dark, earthy background. Then I sprinkled it with lots of crushed custard creams and bourbon biscuits. Then I added a little rock hammer made out of icing, and arranged it on the cake with the sugar geode:

 The next step was to add some "rocks" - or chocolate covered marshmallows! I added some black food colouring to turn the white chocolate grey, and swirled some melted milk chocolate with it to create a natural, rock kind of look as I dipped some marshmallows into the mix.

After a few blades of grass added among the "rocks", it was beginning to look like a natural rocky outcrop, and it was finished off with a few blue flowers to give a burst of colour in one corner.
It is worth mentioning at this point that I got a new square cake board during a recent spending spree at my local kitchen shop. The sad part was that they were having a closing down sale, but at 40 % off everything, at least I left with several heavy bags, knowing that I was donating as much as I could to the store owners. It's a shame that Amazon and such the like are destroying our local, independent stores, but as you will know from links in my previous blog entries, I too am guilty of going for the cheaper options, and effectively lining the pockets of the owners of large, tax-avoiding corporations.

Enough of the politics though! It made a great indulgent birthday cake:

We had a great time eating this cake, despite not being able to handle eating too much of it at once!

Since there's not many people that have attempted sugar geodes on the internet, please add any comments you may have about it here! Have you tried it before, and if so, how did it turn out? Or would you like to try this too, but have some more questions? Just leave your comment below:

PS: If you enjoyed the theme of this post, you might be interested to check out my ammonite fudge which would make a great accompaniment or decoration for this cake!

Have a gneiss day!