Illusion Candy Cake with M&Ms and Maltesers

Ingredients for 1 servings:

• 250 g flour
• ½ pack of baking powder
• 180 g sugar
• 1 packet of vanilla sugar or vanilla sugar
• 1 pinch of salt
• 180 g butter (room temperature)
• 2 eggs (room temperature)
• 150 ml sour cream
• 100 g chocolate drops, baking-proof
• ½ pack of baking powder
• 200 g dark chocolate, alternatively 300 g milk chocolate or 400 g white
• 200 ml cream
• Chocolate bars, e.g. Yoghurette (approx. 30 pieces)
• Sweets (+wrappers) 300-400 g M&Ms and 300-360 g Maltesers, or your choice
• some chocolate to stick the sweets together
• cling film
• 2 shashlik skewers

Instructions

Working time approx. 2 hours; Rest time approx. 2 hours; Cooking/baking time approx. 40 minutes; Total time approx. 4 hours 40 minutes

Gravity Defying Candy Cake | Floating Cake

To make the batter, first beat the softened butter with the sugar and vanilla sugar until fluffy. Then add the eggs and mix well. Once the eggs are well blended with the butter mixture, add the sour cream. Next comes the dry ingredients. Mix the flour with the salt and baking powder and add 1 tablespoon of this to the chocolate chips. This prevents the chocolate from sinking to the bottom of the cake during baking. Then gradually add the flour to the butter and egg mixture and mix as briefly as possible. Now add the chocolate chips and mix in. Finally, pour the batter into a 22-24cm springform pan, spread it out, and bake at 180°C (convection oven) for 35-40 minutes. If no batter sticks to the cake when a skewer is inserted, it is ready and must cool completely before proceeding. During this time, you can prepare the ganache. First, finely chop the chocolate and then pour the boiled cream over it. After about 3 minutes, the chocolate will be melted and can be stirred until smooth. The ganache will be quite runny at first and needs to firm up a bit. To do this, place the bowl in the refrigerator for a while. If it becomes too solid, you can put it in the microwave for a few seconds or heat it over a water bath. How long the ganache needs to set depends on how cold your refrigerator is. Once the cake has cooled and the ganache is spreadable (the consistency of hazelnut nougat spread), you can start decorating. Spread the ganache over the cake and smooth it down. This doesn’t have to be perfect, as you won’t see any of it later. Then place the chocolate bars around the cake (with the smooth side facing inwards). Of course, with this cake, it’s not just the sweets that are important, but also their packaging: To do this, you cut off a small corner, empty the contents into a bowl, and line the empty packages with cling film. This will make it look as if the packages were still filled with sweets. The sweets can then be scattered on the cake. You can see how I did it in the photo – or even better, in the video (see below). To create the floating effect, the shish kebab skewers are inserted into the cake and the sweets are attached to them with chocolate. This step isn’t difficult, but it is very time-consuming. After each “round,” you have to wait until the chocolate has hardened before you can continue. This can take some time. At the very end, you put the packaging over the top, and the whole thing is finished. You can cut the whole thing like a normal cake.