Indulgent Hot Cocoa Cake

As part of my New Year’s resolution, it is to post more recipes! I know you all enjoyed them before so this year, my goal is to publish 1 new recipe a week. At the minimum. Today, I’m starting the year off with my Hot Cocoa Cake that is sure to be a crowd pleaser. It’s rich, chocolatey and you’ll definitely need a glass of milk to wash this down.

I will warn you, there is a fair amount of prep work that needs to be done for this cake and a long list of ingredients. I’ve broken this recipe out into 4 different posts. This post will give you all the details on how to assemble the cake. The other posts will tell you how to make the various recipes. I did it this way so that throughout the year if I want to reuse the cake recipe in a different post I could just link back to the original post that tells you how to make Decadent Red Velvet Cake.

To create this delicious cake you see before you, you’ll need the following –

4 – 8 inch Red Velvet Cake Rounds

1 – recipe of the Roasted Marshmallows

2 – batches of the Hot Cocoa Buttercream Frosting

1 – White Chocolate Ganache

1 – bag of Small Marshmallows

1 – container of Mini-Marshmallows

1 – 12-inch cake board

1 – cake decorating stand

I’ll have some links for some of my favorite tools at the bottom of the recipe. These are the tools I used to create this tasty cake. And trust me, having the correct tools makes it so much easier.

Place the 12-inch cake board on your cake pedestal. If possible, a cake decorating stand that swivels works best.

Next, place a little dollop of the Hot Cocoa Buttercream on the cake board in the center. This will help keep your cake in place as you are decorating it. Then place one of the Red Velvet Cake Rounds in the center of the cake board.

Take some of the buttercream and pipe a circle of frosting around the top of the cake round. Inside the ring of frosting, place the roasted marshmallows. Then place a Red Velvet Cake Round on top and repeat until you have no more cake rounds.

Now your cake is pretty much assembled. It’s time to put the crumb coating on! A crumb coating is a thin layer of frosting that seals the whole cake together. If you’ve ever frosted a cake and had bits of the cake crumbled off and mix into your frosting this is the step that prevents that. So don’t worry if there are bits of the cake in the frosting. Just make a nice thin layer of frosting around the whole cake and then pop it into the freezer for 10 minutes to let it set up. I like to use a cake scraper to get that nice smooth crumb layer.

After 10 minutes you are ready to frost the cake! Remove it from the freezer and place another layer of frosting on the cake. This is a very rich buttercream so you don’t want to put it on too heavy. Once your cake is frosted it’s time to drizzle the ganache.

Place your White Chocolate Ganache in a bottle, make sure it’s not too hot. It it is, it’ll run down the side of the cake and right off. You can always let it cool a little until firms up a little before you start to drizzle. With the bottle tip, place the ganache at the edge of the top of the cake until some starts to drizzle down the side. Once the sides are drizzled, use the remaining ganache to cover the top of the cake.

Take your two sizes of marshmallows and top the cake with them. Place a few marshmallows around the bottom of the cake for a decorative look. And you’re done!

This cake does require refrigeration, otherwise, your buttercream is going to melt and run right off that cake.