Mean and Green: Oreo Mint Cake

I try to accommodate my friends as best I can when having them over for lunch or desert. Remembering who has the peanut allergy, or who hates mushrooms. But on my birthday, to be honest, I couldn’t care less.

For my birthday, I made myself my favorite flavored cake. Mint, chocolate Oreo mint to be precise. I had never made it before, so it was somewhat challenging trying to get the recipe right. I am still tweaking it so it may change in the future, but for now this one works, and works well.

For icing, I covered the cake in a chocolate Ganache recipe inspired by the Joy of Baking one.  The green icing is exactly the Joy of Baking’s Buttercream Icing recipe, but I warn you, if you do not have a good egg beater or kitchen machine, please do not attempt to do the icing. The single whisk mini-kitchen machines really do not have enough power to make the icing nice and fluffy, and you will be wasting all the ingredients.

Ingredients:

Cake:

- 2 cup Flour

- ¾  cup Oil

- 1½ cup Sugar

- 3 Eggs

- ½ cup Milk

- 2 tsp. Baking Powder

- 1 tsp. Mint extract

 - ½ cup Crushed Oreo cookies (about 6 cookies, Borio local brand works just as well)

- pinch of salt

- Green food coloring (optional)

Chocolate Ganache:

- 200 gm dark chocolate cut into small pieces

- 2 Tbsp Butter

- 150 ml Milk

Preparation (Aprrox. 20 mins):

Cake: 

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

In a bowl, blend the eggs, sugar and mint very well, until smooth and airy. Add food coloring.  This will take about 3 mins on high speed with your egg beater. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients (flour, salt, crushed cookies and baking powder). Slowly add in the dry ingredients, oil, and milk to the egg mixture, alternating each, whisking gently while doing so. Do not over beat or use your electric beater for this part. When everything is incorporated, the batter is ready.

Pour the batter into a well greased round cake pan.   

Put in the oven for about 30 mins. Allow to cool before cutting or frosting.

Ganache:

Heat milk in a saucepan. When hot, take off heat and add in chocolate, and half of the butter. Allow to sit for 5 mins, then slowly mix. When all is well incorporated, add in rest of butter. Ganache is ready  to  use. If it hardens before you are able to use, you can re-heat, over a pot of boiling water, or using a heat distributer. Do not heat over direct flame.

Enjoy!