Cake is a sweet food made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients, that is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate, and that share features with other desserts such as pastries, meringues, custards, and pies, with all kind of flavors, shape and height. (wikipedia) Let’s bring a classic camp flavor to this favorite dessert and make s’mores cake!

Supplies:

Cake Ingredients:

  • 3 cups flour
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 1/4 cup oil vegetable
  • canola or light olive oil
  • 1/4 cup natural yogurt
  • 1 cup milk

Chocolate Milk Ganache Ingredients:

  • 200grs chocolate milk
  • 200ml of heavy cream

Meringue Ingredients:

  • 3 large egg whites, at room temperature
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)

black and white chalk style drawing of a cake with 2 layers, dripping ganache, and topped with peaked merengue

S’mores Cake Instructions:

Cake:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Prepare three 8″ cake pans by lightly greasing the sides of the pans and then dusting with flour, then line the bottom of the pans with parchment paper. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter until smooth (You can also use an electric hand mixer or whisk and large bowl.) While mixing, slowly add sugar and continue to mix until the butter and sugar are combined and the mixture is light and fluffy.

While mixing, add the eggs one at a time, blending at least 10-20 seconds between each egg. Add vanilla and oil, and mix. Add yogurt and mix. Reduce the mixer speed to low, and pour in about half of the milk, then half of the flour with the baking powder. Repeat with the rest of milk and flour.

Mix just until all ingredients are combined. Divided batter evenly into prepared pans. Bake in preheated 350°F. oven for 20-30 minutes, or until the cake has a slight dome and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, or with a few moist crumbs, but no wet batter.

Cool cakes in pans for 5-10 minutes, then carefully remove and continue cooling on a wire cooling rack. Once cakes are mostly cool, wrap well in plastic wrap and place cakes in the freezer. This will help keep them moist as they fully cool, and will make them easy to handle (stack and frost) when you’re assembling the cake.

Chocolate Ganache:
Heat the heavy cream in a sauce pan over medium heat, add chopped chocolate milk and wix till all the chocolate is melted and shiny.

Meringue:
Place the egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer with the whisk attachment. (You can also use an electric hand mixer or whisk and large bowl.) Be sure that the mixing bowl and whisk are free from grease and that the egg whites do not have any bits of egg yolks in them.

Begin whisking or beating on medium-low speed. Beat in the cream of tartar, vanilla, and salt, if using. After the whites begin to foam, turn the mixer to medium speed and gradually start adding in the sugar.

Once they begin to foam, begin adding in the sugar, a little bit at a time. After the whites begin to hold their shape, bump up the mixer to medium-high speed until they hold firm peaks. If you pull the whisk straight out of the bowl, a peak will form. At this stage, the tip of the peak will fold back over onto itself.

Fit a piping bag with a plain or star tip. Unfold the top of the piping bag about halfway, then use a rubber spatula to fill the bag with the meringue. Fill the bag only 1/2 to 3/4 of the way full to prevent the meringue from spilling out the top of the bag.

Assemble:
Grab a plate, put 1 cake down, then add a bit of chocolate ganache and spread. Put a cake over the ganache and add a bit of meringue, spread. Put the last cake. Frost the three layer cake using the rest of the ganache.

Pipe decorations on top or just spread a good layer of meringue and using the back of a spoon form picks all over. The last fun part is to use a cooking blow torch and give a little color to your meringue. If you don’t have a blow torch you should: grab a tray put parchment paper, (first draw a circle the size of your pan, with the drawing part down), put some meringue and spread till you cover the circle, just do just like you should on top of the cake.

Next put the tray in your oven with the grill option on and just bake for a few minutes, just until the meringue has a bit of color.

And your S’mores Cake is ready to eat. Enjoy!

Contributed by Mafalda
JustCombined (Dittany) is our resident Slytherin, a veteran IGGPPCamper, and a lover of all things food-related. If you put it in front of her, she’ll turn it into something delicious! (Is it magic? Mayyyyybe.) You can find her, @JustCombined, on Twitter and IG, be sure to say hello – Parseltongue greetings accepted!