It’s not Russian but it is a slice! Seemingly sometimes known as ‘Tipsy Cake’ in the US, this is an old school way that bakeries battled food waste by utilising leftover and stale cakes. Trust me, its much more appetising than that sounds and best of all, Russian Slice is incredibly simple to make. Oh, and always a bonus – its boozy as heck!
Making the Cakes (Skip if using leftovers or shop-bought cake)
Preheat the oven to 180c or equivalent.
Line a brownie pan with parchment paper.
Add 250g Butter, 250g Caster Sugar, 4 Eggs and 250g Self Raising Flour to a large mixing bowl and beat together until fully combined and a bit airy.
Scoop just under half of the mixture into a medium mixing bowl. Add 2 tbsp Cocoa Powder and 2 tbsp Skimmed Milk to the removed mix and beat to combine.
Add 1 tbsp Vanilla Extract to the remaining original mixture and beat in.
Scoop half of the vanilla cake mix into a small mixing bowl and add 1/2 tsp Red Food Colouring.
Spoon all of the 3 cake batters into the lined brownie pan. A little mixing around the edges/joins won’t hurt.
Bake the cake for about 25/30 minutes until a skewer comes out clean. Then give it a further 5 minutes to get a bit drier. So counter-intuitive!
Once the cakes are cool enough to touch, tear them up into chunks and leave them on a cooling rack to cool and dry out. Leaving them for a couple of days, out, but under a fly cover would be ideal.
Construct the Slice
Line a small roasting tray with parchment paper.
When you’re ready to make the slices, use your fingers to crumble each colour of cake into separate mixing bowls. You are aiming for a breadcrumb size pieces but some larger pieces won’t hurt.
Warm 8 tbsp Apricot Jam in a small bowl and mix in 5 tbsp Sherry.
Split the boozy jam between the bowls. Mix each to damp consistency.
Spoon the mixtures into the lined tin in a haphazard fashion, pressing it down as you go to create a block of marbled boozy cake crumbs.
Ice the Slice
Melt 50g Dark Chocolate in the microwave and leave to cool a little. Or melt it in a small pan on the hob.
Mix 4 tbsp Sweet Sherry and 50g Icing Sugar into the chocolate and beat until smooth and lump free. Add a little extra sherry or icing sugar to achieve the consistency of runny honey.
In a separate bowl, combine 50g Icing Sugar with a little water to make a slightly runnier white icing. Put this in a sandwich bag or disposable piping bag.
Pour the chocolate icing over the cake and smooth out to the edges.
Snip the end off the piping bag or corner off the sandwich bag and pipe the white icing in horizontal stripes over the chocolate icing.
Start with the middle stripe and work outwards to make sure the stripes are vaguely even before you run out of icing with only half covered! Saying this, there is nothing to stop you making up some more white icing if you need.
Run a skewer up and down the length of the tin in even stripes to create the feather effect.
Put the whole cake into the fridge for the icing to set and the cake mix to firm up. A couple of hours will do it. You can cheat with a bit of freezer time if you need to, just don’t forget about it!
Slice into 16 pieces. I trimmed off the edges for presentation but there is no real reason to do this in real life.