Ever since I saw this cake over at I Am Baker I've been dying to cover the outside of a cake with Oreo cookie crumbs. Seriously, it's been keeping me up at night. I do that, obsess about baked goods in the middle of the night. I'm weird. A couple of weeks ago I needed to thank a friend and it was just the excuse I needed to make this cake. Here's the story.
My daughter, who has never swam competitively, has decided to go out for the High School Swim Team this coming school year. I'm so proud of her for trying something new. But, being as she has never swam competitively, she's a little behind on some of the necessary skills. Some work is in order. My dear friend Beth just happens to be the most awesome swim teacher around. And, although, she usually teaches younger kids how to swim, she graciously offered to help out. My daughter and her have been working in the pool on flip turns, backwards flip turns, proper stroke from, the whole sha-bang. Beth has done such a wonderful job. She has a great knack for finding the perfect balance of challenge and encouragement. It's been great. When I asked how I could thank her, I mean really thank her for her hard work, She said "Bake me a cake." This could be no ordinary cake. It had to be awesome, and, to toot my own horn, I think it was. "Toot, toot!"
I started off by making an 8-inch round, 2 layer chocolate cake.
And flavored it using this gooey concoction of 3 tablespoons instant coffee and 2 tablespoons Kahlúa. I use this to flavor any and everything with delicious coffee flavor. Cheesecakes, shortbread, Nanaimo Bars, you name it. It gives the most intense yet smooth coffee flavor. If you don't want to use the booze, just use water or coffee.
To assemble the cake I started off with a whole package of Oreo cookies. I split one cake layer in half and left the other whole. I started with one half layer. Laid on a 1/2-inch of coffee buttercream then sprinkled on some coarse chopped Oreo cookies and pushed them down into the icing.
I covered that with a thin layer of buttercream, just to fill the gaps and topped it with the whole cake layer.
Then repeated the filling and topped it off with the remaining 1/2 layer. This is coming together nicely! Seriously, chocolate, coffee, Oreo cookies, what can go wrong!
Then a generous slathering of buttercream on the outside, smoothed out to perfection. More detail on how to fill and ice a cake can be found on this post.
The remainder of the package of Oreo cookies went into the food processor and were ground very finely and dumped into a big bowl. Balancing the cake in my left hand, I held it over the bowl and scooped the crumbs up in my right hand and pressed them against the side of the cake, letting the excess crumbs fall back into the bowl. This was pretty messy and took a few turns around the cake to get it covered. Then pressed a few handfuls on the top, brushing off the crumbs very carefully.
I finished it off with a shell border around the bottom and an Oreo cookie on top. I made this the night before I gave it to Beth because I wanted the cookies to get soft and absorb some of the moisture from the buttercream. If you want the cookies to be more crunchy then make it the same day you plan to serve it. The longer is sits, the softer the cookies will get. I recommend storing it in the refrigerator until about 45 minutes before you plan to serve. Yummy!
What you'll need to make this cake:
2 8-inch layers of chocolate cake. (one split in half)
3 T. Instant Coffee
2 T. Kahlúa (coffee or water)
1 Package Oreo Cookies
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