Día De Los Muertos Mexican crunch brownie cake
Updated: Oct 20, 2021
November 2nd is El día de los muertos, a Mexican holiday that is dedicated to remembering and honouring those loved ones who have passed, it's a celebration of life and death.
A few years ago I was lucky enough to be visiting San Francisco during this day and see the traditional parade through the streets of Mission District and the neighbourhood full of altars and flowers and colourful skulls, it was such a fascinating experience!
This year I'm in Milan but I made a Mexican crunch brownie cake to celebrate this holiday in my own way. I even managed to share it with a few friends, which is a big victory in 2020!
This cake has a crunchy bottom made with Cinnamon Toast Crunch CHURROS, then a layer of sourdough brownie (I adapted the recipe from here) and finally a colourful skull made with white chocolate and food colouring.
I had so much fun making it, check out the recipe below if you want to make it too 😊
INGREDIENTS:
--- CHURROS CEREAL CRUST ---
55g butter
--- SOURDOUGH DISCARDS BROWNIE LAYER ---
170g dark chocolate
55g butter
21g cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract*
1 large egg + 1 egg yolk*
100g granulated sugar
55g brown sugar
62g sourdough starter (100% hydration) *
62g all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
--- TOPPINGS ---
White chocolate*
Food colouring
DIRECTIONS:
Put Cinnamon Toast Crunch CHURROS in a food processor and pulse a few times until the cereal turn into powder.
Melt butter in the microwave or in a double boiler on the stove.
Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C) and cover a 20 or 22cm springform pan with parchment paper.
In a bowl mix together melted butter and Cinnamon Toast Crunch CHURROS powder until you get the consistency of wet sand; press this mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan to create the crunchy cake bottom. Set aside.
Make the brownie layer: Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat; add dark chocolate, vanilla extract and cocoa powder. Mix until the mixture is smooth then remove from the heat and set it aside to cool down.
In a big bowl add egg, granulated sugar and dark brown sugar and whisk with the electric beaters until pale and very fluffy (6-7 minutes).
Pour sourdough starter and the melted chocolate mixture and whisk on low speed until creamy; finally stir in flour and salt and mix with a spatula until combined (the batter will be very thick!!).
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 20 minutes or until the edges look set and dry.
Let it cool in the pan for about 10 minutes.
Melt white chocolate on a double boiler or in the microwave, then pour a few drops of food colouring and garnish the surface with a toothpick (Yes you can use a pastry bag if you are cool like that, I'm not 😂) using the sugar skull stencil as a guidance.
Enjoy :)
RECIPE NOTES:
You can use vanillina (powdered vanilla) if you can't find vanilla extract.
Don't throw your egg white away, you can use it as a topping or in another recipe.
My sourdough starter was 4 days old and kept in the fridge.
I made my sugar skull using one of these stencils and coloured white chocolate but you can definitely use royal icing to do so. I mean, that was my initial idea but I ran out of powdered sugar so I decided to use white chocolate... 🤷♀️
RECIPE CARD:
If you make it let me know! :)
