Konditor’s Curly Wurly cake
My attempt at the Konditor Curly Wurly cake. A chocolate cake with vanilla bean frosting.
I went to Borough Market last weekend, the first time in a year or so. I had specifically gone as I had just had my COVID jab at Guys Hospital which is just a few minutes walk away and felt I deserved a reward! To be honest, needles don’t bother me, but any excuse!
On a side note, I was really impressed with the vaccination process, it was super fast, I went straight in to the vaccination site and waited less than 10 minutes for the vaccination. There was someone there to clean every chair between people sitting on them and once through to the actual ward, all the preliminary questions and checks went through fine and the injection itself was over in seconds. The longest part was waiting in the recovery area for 15 minutes (in case you have any immediate adverse reactions). I was on my way to Konditor, my favourite cake shop, in less than 30 minutes after arrival. Very impressive.
Anyway, I was so disappointed to arrive at the shop I have frequented now for over a decade to see it had been stripped and gutted with moving boxes everywhere, the foreclosure sign in the window.
Konditor & Cooke as it was originally known was my original student foodie refuge from when I was at law school. There was a branch near the Stamford St branch of BPP where I studied. I didn’t do a law degree at uni which meant to qualify as a solicitor I had to do a year-long post-grad conversion course where they basically cram in as much of a law degree as they can in to one year. It was without doubt the most academically challenging and intense year of my life.
Every fortnight I would have a double EU law lecture, and I won’t lie, I struggled to stay awake, it was not only complex but I found it incredibly boring! By way of reward post-lecture, my friend and I used to treat ourselves to something at Konditor & Cooke. We eventually found our favourites and I would get the Boston Brownie, a rich, chocolatey brownie which had sour cranberries dotted throughout, and she would get a slice of the Curly Wurly cake, of course some times we’d swap too. This became our routine without fail, we also tried going to the gym together, though that tended to be with less regular frequency! This was way back in 2005, and I no longer have the lectures to go to, but who doesn’t need a pick me up treat now and again and Konditor has remained my favourite of all places for such things ever since.
When I left Borough Market empty handed (yes, there is a multitude of other amazing cake stalls which I could have gone to, but none of those mean the same to me. Sometimes I think comfort food is gained from ritual, from something consistent, something reliable and known, it is not the fact that you are pigging out on any old cake itself that matters) I decided to try making the Curly Wurly cake myself. I’d seen the recipe online already on several websites, but Konditor had also posted the recipe on their blog.
Typically, I did not have the right size cake tins and so I had to guess-stimate the baking time. I have always found the cake a little too sweet too and so figured this was an opportunity for a bit of tweaking anyway to make the cake more to my tastes. The result was truly satisfying, though not as good as the original, I hope Konditor will survive this pandemic and I will definitely be a returning customer.
I have copied the recipe below and marked out where I made adaptations in italics. The original recipe can be found here.
Ingredients
Sponge cake
250ml milk
275g light soft brown sugar (personally I think 200g is enough)
100g dark chocolate (54% cocoa solids) chopped (I only had 70% at home and I think 54% would have worked better as very dark chocolate can be a little too intense and bitter, I noticed this particularly on the chocolate swirls on top)
175g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
30g cocoa powder
100g salted butter, softened
2 medium eggs, lightly beaten
Vanilla cream cheese frosting – one of the best things about this cake in my opinion
200g full-fat cream cheese
400g icing sugar (I reduced this to 300g as always find the frosting on this cake in particular way too sweet, my only criticism!)
50g unsalted butter
Seeds of 1/2 vanilla pod or 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (I would increase this to a full teaspoon as otherwise the vanilla can be lost against the chocolate flavour of the cake)
Chocolate flakes or a little melted chocolate (optional) – not optional in my opinion, if you’re going to make the Curly Wurly cake, you’ve got to add the chocolate swirls! It takes the visual appearance from a 5/10 to a 10/10 and adds more chocolate too!
Instructions
Heat the oven to 190c/gas mark 5. Line two 17cm sandwich tins with foil or baking parchment. I only had a 19cm cake tin and adjusted the timing to 170c for an hour.
Heat half the milk and half the soft brown sugar together in a saucepan until the sugar is dissolved. Don’t make the heat too ferocious else you may find the milk curdles. If this happens it’s not the end of the world. Just carry on regardless!
Reduce the heat to low and add the chopped chocolate and stir until it has melted. Turn off the heat and leave to cool whilst you make the rest of the cake.
Sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder together and gently mix then set aside.
Put the butter in a large bowl, add the remaining sugar and beat together until light and fluffy, using an electric mixer. (I prefer to use a stand mixer than hand held). Gradually add the beaten eggs, alternating each addition with a tablespoon of the flour mixture to prevent it splitting.
Fold in the rest of the flour, followed by the remaining milk, then add the chocolate mixture, its fine if it’s still warm. Mix until smooth; it will have a very runny consistency.
Divide the mixture between the 2 lined tins and bake for 20-25 minutes, until risen and firm to the touch. Or in my case, use one 19cm tin and bake for about an hour on 170c. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tins.
Turn the cakes out their tins. If you only used one tin then cut the cake horizontally to form two layers.
Make the frosting – this step oddly is missed from the Konditor recipe on the blog. I guess they assume you know how to make it, it is pretty simple.
Beat the cream cheese and butter together (these should ideally both be room temperature for the best texture and to avoid lumps).
Add the icing sugar. To avoid a total mess, first pour in about half of the icing sugar and stir it in gently with a spoon. Once it is roughly incorporated, mix well with your stand mixer. Repeat with the rest of the icing sugar.
Add in the vanilla extract and beat once more to incorporate. Yum!
Sandwich the layers together with about a quarter of the frosting. Spread a thin layer of frosting over the top and sides to bind any crumbs and then leave to set in the fridge for an hour. This is a bit more faff but this crumb coating is important if you want a really nice clean white finish at the end.
Coat the cake with the remaining frosting, smoothing it with a palette knife. At this point I put my cake back in the fridge again for the icing to firm up as it felt quite runny and I didn’t want the chocolate to start running everywhere.
Decorating
For the chocolate swirls I melted 50g of chocolate, broken in to pieces in the microwave (at 600w for about 90 seconds, stirring half way through) and poured this in to a small sauce bottle I have with a fine tip. At this point the pattern is up to you but I basically aimed for super swirly ‘S’ or backward ‘S’ shapes. Alternatively keep it simple with just some chocolate sprinkles or grated chocolate.
You could also use a piping bag with a fine nozzle or make your own with baking parchment. The Konditor blog includes instructions on how to do this but I found it hard to follow, instead here’s a really good Youtube video showing the same.
