NEAPOLITAN CAKE!
Chocolate Cake, Strawberry Cake, and Vanilla cake with all the trimmings… perfect Neapolitan Cake!
So… the Neapolitan theme is definitely one of my favourites. If you aren’t aware of it, its basically an ice-cream from my childhood that I remember it best by, with Chocolate, Strawberry and Vanilla all in one. It’s SO good, but everyone I knew I always had a favourite flavour. Mine was Chocolate, obviously.
I’ve posted a couple of Neapolitan recipes before with my Neapolitan Cheesecake and my Neapolitan Cupcakes for example, so I thought it was about time I did another one, and I thought a full layer cake was the best route to go. You can see from the images that its a showstopper of a cake, and has a layer that everyone will love most!
You can see from my photos that my sponges have been trimmed, and thats partly because my oven is a bit shocking lately (hello randomly burning everything ever), and because I really wanted the bright pink to be on show. This is an optional thing, and I preferably would have left the sponges alone… but alas.
The cake sponges are basically just a Victoria sponge type recipe that I have used in many a recipe such as my Oreo Drip Cake, or even Biscoff cake for example. A simple ratio recipe of the same weight of Butter, Sugar, Flour and Eggs and you have a dreamer of a cake.
You can obviously add various things in such as all of the flavours. For this particular beauty, I decided to used Melted Chocolate for the chocolate flavour, so that I didn’t have to add any more dry ingredients such as cocoa powder. If you add the cocoa powder into the third of the sponge, it will end up more madeira like, and the other two sponges will be a lot softer.
Dark chocolate is the best chocolate to use, and any supermarket own brand will do well! The Strawberry Layer is a bit different, where you can easily use Strawberry Flavouring if you prefer, or use the Strawberry Coulis. It’s quite easy to make your own strawberry coulis by using 300g of Strawberries and 100g of Caster Sugar.
To make the Coulis all you have to do is chop the the strawberries into quarters and remove the tops, add the strawberries in to a pan with the sugar and heat on a medium heat – mash the fruit with a fork and heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved and the fruit has become saucy. Pass the mixture through a sieve into a bowl and bin the mushy bits that are left – refrigerate until needed.
The final layer is Vanilla, so obviously that is quite simple. Add in a good quality Vanilla extract, and you’ll have your final layer. The buttercream, flavours are flavoured in the same ways to make things easier. You don’t have to use the pink food colouring, but I think it makes it look properly Neapolitan themed. A good quality one is best, so I recommend Progel Pink!
Please ignore the state of my buttercream poops, it has a hot day…. enjoy the recipe! x
Neapolitan Cake!
Prep Time
15 mins
Cook Time
30 mins
Total Time
45 mins
Chocolate Cake, Strawberry Cake, and Vanilla cake with all the trimmings... perfect Neapolitan Cake!
Ingredients
Cake Ingredients
- 400 g Unsalted Butter/Stork
- 400 g Caster Sugar
- 8 Medium Eggs
- 400 g Self Raising Flour
- 100 g Dark Chocolate (melted)
- 50 g Strawberry Coulis (or any coulis)
- Pink Food Colouring
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
Buttercream Ingredients
- 300 g Unsalted Butter (room temp)
- 600 g Icing Sugar
- 50 g Melted Chocolate
- 25 g Strawberry Coulis
- Pink Food Colouring
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
Decoration
- Fresh Strawberries
- Pieces of Chocolate
Instructions
For the Cake!
- Preheat your oven to 180C/160C Fan, and line three 8"/20cm Round Cake Tins with parchment paper. Leave to the side for now.
- In a bowl/stand mixer, add your Butter/Stork and Sugar, and beat till fluffy.
- Add in the Eggs and Flour, and beat again. Split the mixture into three bowls. It will be about 525g in each bowl to make sure its even.
- Add some cooled melted chocolate to one, and mix. Add the coulis and pink food colouring to the other, and mix. And add the vanilla to the final one and mix.
- Pour each mix into its own tin, and bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until its baked. A skewer should come out clean!
For the Buttercream!
- Beat the Unsalted Butter (please don't use anything else other than actual unsalted butter) in a bowl till its all smooth. Room temperature butter is best.
- Add in the Icing sugar and beat again. If the butter was really supple and smooth before adding, this icing sugar should go in easily.
- Split the mixture between three bowls, and add the cooled melted chocolate to one, the coulis and pink food colouring to another, and the vanilla to the final and beat again till smooth!
For the Decoration!
- Put each buttercream into a bag. Do this in whatever order you like, but I did my chocolate layer, and then my chocolate buttercream, strawberry layer and then my strawberry buttercream, my vanilla layer, and then the vanilla buttercream on top!
- With each layer, I just blobbed it on as you can see.
- Once each layer is added on, I used the leftover buttercream to add some extra height and decoration to the cake.
- Decorate with Fresh Strawberries, Pieces of Chocolate, or whatever!
Recipe Notes
- This recipe will last for 3 days once made
- I used Progel Pink Food Colouring to get a lovely pink colour, and some strawberry coulis. You can use any red berry coulis if you don't want to make it yourself! It's very important to use GOOD QUALITY food colouring, and not cheap supermarket stuff.
- I used Dark Chocolate because its a better flavour once baked in comparison to milk chocolate. It also gets the colour of the sponge to be darker and look more chocolate like.
- You can make a smaller version (two layer) if you like, but obviously you might have to make the sponges swirled in colour if there are only two. Use two thirds of the ingredients and:
- 300g Unsalted Butter
- 300g Caster Sugar
- 6 Medium Eggs
- 300g Self Raising Flour
- 75g Melted Chocolate
- 40g Coulis
- I had to trim my sponges down because my oven is a bit off at the moment, but it also showed the pink colour better as coloured sponges can often still look brown on the outside. This is normal.
Nutrition Facts
Neapolitan Cake!
Amount Per Serving
Calories 497Calories from Fat 54
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 6g9%
Saturated Fat 3g15%
Cholesterol 87mg29%
Sodium 36mg2%
Potassium 116mg3%
Total Carbohydrates 91g30%
Dietary Fiber 1g4%
Sugars 69g
Protein 6g12%
Vitamin A2.5%
Calcium2.3%
Iron8.7%
* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
ENJOY!
