Absinthe Chocolate Cake

Taste the green fairy with a flaming absinthe chocolate cake.

Posted by Cat Morley

About

Tom and I have birthday's one day apart, so we had a party this weekend. Tom loves chocolate cake and I love absinthe, so I made us an absinthe chocolate cake, complete with sugar cubes which we set on fire, instead of candles.

I adapted one of Nigella Lawson's recipes for a Chocolate Loaf Cake for the base, cut out a most of the water to make it dense and added lots of tasty absinthe.

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You Will Need (15 things)

  • Absinthe (to soak sugar cubes and set on fire)
  • Icing Sugar for dusting
  • Green Food Coloring
  • Sugar Cubes
  • 1 tsp Bicarbonate Of Soda
  • 1 jar Marshmallow Fluff
  • 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
  • 2 Egg(s)
  • 3 tsp Absinthe
  • 100 g Dark Chocolate
  • 100 g boiling Water
  • 225 g unsalted Butter
  • 200 g Flour
  • 375 g dark Muscovado Sugar
  • Green Icing

Steps (14 steps, 60 minutes)

  1. 1

    Cream together the muscovado sugar and butter. Beat the eggs and then beat in.

  2. 2

    Add the vanilla extract and the absinthe.

  3. 3

    Melt down the chocolate and mix in.

  4. 4

    Mix together the flour and bicarbonate of soda and then add to your batter.

  5. 5

    Boil the water and slowly add to the batter but don't let it get too runny. Stop when the batter is thick but easy to mix.

  6. 6

    We're going to need three tiers for this cake. So grease three baking tins with butter, then cut parchment paper to place on the bottom, butter again and flour.

    This is a really sticky moist cake, so you're going to need all these reinforcements to get them out. Bake for half an hour at 170"C.

    Remove from the oven and leave to cool before gently lifting them out of the baking tins.

  7. 7

    Mix together the marshamallow fluff with another tsp of absinthe in a bowl.

  8. 8

    Add a few drops of green food colouring, so you get a nice absinthe green colour.

  9. 9

    Place one cake tier down and cover with marshmallow fluff, add on a second, cover with marshmallow fluff and add the third on top.

  10. 10

    Now mix together some icing sugar with a small drop of green food colouring in a bowl, until the sugar turns green.

  11. 11

    Place a few drops of icing around the outside edge of the cake (I just used store bought ready-to-squeeze icing but you can make your own) and place a sugar cube on top of each drop.

    If you have an absinthe spoon, lay it down in the center of your cake.

  12. 12

    Place your green icing sugar in a sieve and dust through the spoon on to the cake, so you're left with a dusted eye print.

  13. 13

    To serve, pour absinthe over each absinthe cube and set on fire (be careful with this - the alcohol is really flammable).

  14. 14

    Here's a video of it on fire, I'd recommend turning out the lights!