Buddy the Elf Cake

We were back in action this January with a cake that would make Buddy the Elf proud, even though it doesn't quite have the four food groups (candy, candy canes, candy corn, and syrup).  

Sara and I are not really into the purely decorative. We prefer the purely tasty, no matter how ugly.  So since this month's challenge--a biscuit joconde imprime--was a decorative one, we opted to fill it with an entremets that was the most over-the-top, tastiest thing we could find--a Chocolate-Malt Cake.

This Chocolate-Malt Cake looked like something that a kid with an insane sweet tooth would dream up.  Or, like I said, Buddy the Elf.  It had a *lot* of ingredients.  In particular, a *lot* of Ovaltine.

But first the joconde imprime.  Here is part of it going into the freezer to set.

Then we layered the spongecake batter over it.

And here it is after baking.  As usual, it doesn't look quite as beautiful as it did in our imaginations, but we were actually pretty happy with the result.

Now for the fun part!  Stuffing cake layer one of three into the joconde imprime.

Each of the three cake layers had chocolate-malt-milk crumbs, chocolate-malt syrup, and...

... toasted marshmallows!!!  (Thanks to TJ for wielding the industrial-style blow torch.)  Actually, we forgot marshmallows on the very first layer.  Shhh... don't tell!

Before adding the very last layer on top, we put the cake in the freezer and had some delicious Ethiopian food for dinner, up the street from Sara's apartment.  Then we came home and added the toppings -- here's what it looked like.

A glimpse of the top of the entremets surrounded by the joconde imprime.

Side view... Yum!  I think this shows best how delicious this cake was.

Or maybe this does!  It was truly decadent.  A wonderful way to ring in a new year of baking daringly.

The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog accro. She chose to challenge everyone to make a Biscuit Joconde Imprime to wrap around an Entremets dessert.

The Chocolate-Malt Cake was from a recipe by Christina Tosi from Momofuku Milk Bar in Bon Appetit via The Bitten Word.