Super Yum Layered Mud Cake

This weekend we went up to Shoalhaven Heads for Nathan's sister Leonie's birthday and I had the job of making the birthday cake. A cake to feed 10 hungry members of the Weber family needs to be a pretty big cake, so I decided to make two cakes and layer them. A layer of white chocolate mud, then ganache, then chocolate mud, then ganache and repeat. Then covered with ganache - perfect. This recipe is adapted from a Women's Weekly recipe:

Preheat oven to 150 degrees

• 250g butter, chopped
• 150g white chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 2 cups caster sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 1 1/2 cups plain flour, sifted
• 1/2 cup self raising flour, sifted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder, sifted
• 200g milk chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 200g dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 300mL thickened cream

• Melt butter, white chocolate, sugar, milk in a saucepan over low heat until smooth (will take about 15mins - keep stirring so you don't burn the chocolate). Pour mixture into a large bowl and allow to cool for about 10mins.
• Whisk flours, vanilla and eggs into melted mixture. Pour half of mixture into a round cake tin. Whisk cocoa powder into the remaining mixture and put in another round cake tin.
• Put cakes in oven and bake for about 1hr 10mins.
• Allow cakes to cool 5mins in pan and then put on cake racks to cool.
• Once completely cool cut cakes in half with a bread knife (or get someone else to do it like I did so you have someone to blame if they turn out wonky).

To make the ganache ~

• Heat cream until almost boiling and then take off the heat. 
• Add about 1/4 of the chocolate and stir until melted.
• Keep adding more chocolate and stirring until it has all melted (put it back on very low heat if no more chocolate will melt).
• Chill for 2-3hrs in the fridge until it is a spreadable consistency (if it gets too hard zap it in the microwave for 10-20 seconds).

To assemble the cake ~

• Place a layer of the white chocolate mud cake on a plate and spread with a thin layer of ganache.
• Sandwich with chocolate mud layer and spread with a thin layer of ganache. Repeat with remaining cake layers.
• Cover the whole cake with the remaining ganache, spreading out with the back of a spoon.
• To make smooth dip a metal spatula in boiling water and then firmly run over the ganache. Start with the sides of the cakes and do the top last. this makes the edges of the cakes look a lot nicer.
• Decorate as desired - we used strawberries - yum!!

I unfortunately didn't take a photo of the cake when it was cut. But there were perfect layers 

- so thanks to Nathan for doing a good job cutting the cakes in half :)