TASTY RAMEN NOODLE CAKE
WHAT IS IT?
A banana sandwich sponge cake, wrapped in buttercream and topped with fondant icing ‘ noodles’, mango juice ‘fish roe’, ‘sweet vegetables’ and a ‘ chicken breast’ made from melted marshmallows and rolled in cereal ‘breadcrumbs’.
FIDDLY EQUIPMENT:
Bags and bags of coloured fondant icing (£1.89), and agaragar (£ 5 from Waitrose), a jelly- like substance which can be used to make liquid solidify into tiny spheres. You’ll also need a pasta maker, which Yan used in the show to make her fondant ‘ noodles’ — or you could roll them by hand.
HOW TO MAKE IT:
I made a basic Victoria sponge and added several drops of banana essence (£3.99, Lakeland) for flavour, before slicing it in half lengthways and sandwiching it together with buttercream, packed with more banana flavouring. I then dyed some of the buttercream yellow with food colouring (£1.99) and dotted it around the edges and on top of the cake, using a palette knife to flatten it and create stripes like a bamboo noodle bowl.
Next, I made a ‘chilli pepper’, ‘pak choi’ and ‘ tuna rolls’ from coloured fondant. The ‘ chicken fillet’ is made from melted marshmallows and icing sugar, to which I added Rice Krispies and, using my hands, rolled it in crushed cornflakes ( to resemble the breadcrumbs on the outside).
THE TRICKY BIT:
The ‘noodles’ are fiddly, as it’s hard to feed fondant icing through a pasta maker and it hardens quickly, so you must work fast.
The toughest bit, however, were the tiny balls of ‘salmon roe’, made from mango juice. I heated a few tablespoons with agar-agar (which is a powder made from algae), then stirred the mixture and let it thicken as it cooled. I then used a teaspoon to drip it into a ramekin of cold vegetable oil straight from the fridge. As if by magic, instead of dispersing in the oil, the droplets stay intact as little balls. They’re fiddly but I managed to get them in place with a pair of chopsticks.
TASTE TEST:
The sponge is lovely — buttery, nicely banana-flavoured and fluffy. The ‘chicken’ tastes like a children’s Rice Krispie bun and the ‘roe’ are like little balls of juice. But my ‘noodles’ had gone a bit dry and flaky, as had the doughy ‘pak choi’.
CAKE OR ILLUSION?
To my surprise, this looked really effective — the attention to detail and the bright colours make it a feast for the eyes. It’s a shame it contains far more calories than a Chinese takeaway.