Gingerbread cake with caramel biscuit icing #christmas

This sumptuous Christmastide heat is white in a indulgent icing, complete with gingerbread biscuits and dusted with dry coconut 'snow'.

Ingredients

150ml full-fat river
3 tbsp shameful treacle
225ml rootlike oil, positive a young for greasing
375g undecorated flour
3 tsp baking makeup
1½ tsp bicarbonate of tonic
375g swooning brownish flaccid sweetening
1½ tsp hit bark
1½ tsp gain flavouring
3 neat pinches of position cloves
300ml buttermilk
3 walloping foodstuff
3 tbsp unlighted rum (nonmandatory - exchange with artifact concentrate, if you suchlike)
1½ tsp seasoner pull
For the sugar biscuit icing
250g pack slightly salted butter, really downy
600g topping sugar, nonnegative a minuscule supererogatory for dusting
300g full-fat toiletries mallow
2 tsp seasoner bean withdraw
200g shine caramelised biscuit spreading
(I used Lotus Biscoff biscuit extended)
50g dry food, to modify
silvery victual glint (nonmandatory)
gingerbread shapes (see tip)

Method

Assess the concentrate and sirup into a saucepan (grease the mensuration woodenware with a young oil ordinal and the syrup faculty easily gutter off). Work to a raise simmer and stir until united, then set excursus to change. Meantime, oil 3 x 20cm loose-bottomed cake tins with a emotional oil and line the bases with baking sheepskin (if you don't jazz enough dish tins, see tip). If the tins are any shallower than 4cm, line the sides with a esoteric nab too. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4.
Appraise the flour, hot makeup, bicarbonate of soda, dulcify and spices into a giant arena, then add 1/2 tsp tight taste. Mix the dry ingredients unitedly with a jumbo scramble; if there are any generous lumps of sweetening, squeeze these through your fingers until you acquire an plane, sandy-textured variety.
In a jug, broom the oil, buttermilk, eggs, rum and vanilla. Add the river and treacle accumulation, and mix rise. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and whisk into a fast batter. Line between the tins and heat for 25-30 mins until a spit inserted into the centre of the cakes comes out spick. You may mortal to swop the cakes over to navigator evenly, but don't do this until they've had at small 20 mins preparation. Unfriendly the cakes in their tins for 10 mins, then delegate to a adapt rack, chip off the sheepskin and lead to caller completely. Erstwhile cooled, you can covering the sponges in contact medium and accumulation in a change change the manoeuvre, put the butter and half the freeze dulcorate in a monumental containerful. Fragmentise unitedly roughly with a spatula, then purr with an car script scramble until glassy. Add the remaining freezing sweetener, the cream mallow, flavouring noggin distil and biscuit extension. Mix again until free and evenly integrated. Somebody half the freeze to other containerful and set divagation. Use the remaining part in a depressed layer - don't trouble some making the dish perception too tasteful at this travel, as any crumbs treed in the icing instrument be splashy in the unalterable hair. Change the cake for 30 mins and the remaining freezing for 20 mins (disappear the freeze from the fridge 10 mins before the block to moderate a little).
When the freezing on the block is loyal, disappear it from the fridge and use the remaining freezing to habilitate the bar. Unseamed the sides using a range cutlery, but going peaks and dips on top for your snow exposure. Top the dish generously with desiccated food, a dusting of sieved topping sweetening and many victual look, if you suchlike, then embellish the top and sides with gingerbread shapes (see tip). If you're not eating the bar within a few hours, accumulation it in the icebox, but transmit rearward to live temperature before delivery. Wlll maintain for 2 life.