Amarula Chocolate Cake

Amarula liqueur looks and smells a lot like Irish Cream

Frosting

 

My friend is sadly moving to India! She gave me a bottle of Amarula. Never even heard of it until now. It is a cream liqueur, much like Irish Cream. It comes from the South African Marula tree. Wanted to use the Amarula  in a dessert for her farewell dinner so decided to try to make this cake with Amarula liqueur.

The cake itself is delicious (smells wonderful too!) and I love the liqueur you can still taste in the cake. My only edit would be the frosting. I found the original recipe to be too sour and bitter because of the cream cheese and liqueur. I added an additional 1 cup of powdered sugar. Maybe next time, would add less cocoa powder or less cream cheese... I had a lot of leftover frosting.  Frosting was very easy to spread on the cake though!


Sour Cream and Amarula Chocolate Cake
Recipe by Tea, Cake and Create

Preheat the oven to 180'C
Grease and line 2x 20cm cake pans

Ingredients:
125ml (1/2 cup) boiling water
125ml (1/2 cup) cocoa powder
30ml (2 tbs) vegetable oil
60ml (1/4 cup) Amarula Cream liqueur
360g cake flour (I ran out- so measured 3 cups of flour, took out 3 tablespoons of flour and added in 3 tablespoons of cornstarch)
11/2tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
165g butter (~1 and half sticks of butter)
275g caster sugar
2 eggs + 2 egg yolks
250ml (1 cup) sour cream
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix the cocoa powder with the boiling water and oil and set aside to cool slightly. Then stir the Amarula into this mixture.

Sift the flour and baking soda into a bowl.

Using a mixer, cream the butter and sugar together.
 Add the eggs and egg yolks one at a time, beat well between additions.
Add the vanilla extract and the cocoa mixture. Beat well.

With the mixer on low speed, alternate adding the flour and the sour cream to the butter/ egg mixture. Begin and end with the dry ingredients. Mix until just combined.

Spoon into the prepared cake pans.       
Bake for approx. 30-35 minutes or until a skewer comes out just-clean.

Leave to cool in the tin for 10minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Amarula and Chocolate Icing
Recipe by Tea, Cake and Create

375g cream cheese 
100g butter
3/4 cup sifted icing sugar (used additional 1 cup of powdered sugar, so a total of 1 ¾ cups)
3/4 cup sifted cocoa powder
120ml Amarula Cream liqueur 

Beat together the butter and icing sugar until smooth and creamy. Add the cream cheese. Beat until soft. 
Beat in the cocoa and Amarula. Beat until combined. 
Use to ice the cake once it (the cake) has cooled completely.

The flavour matures with time, so if possible, store this cake overnight before serving.