Crush Cakes: Idris Elba

There's no better way to express your feelings than baking a cake for your celebrity crush and eating it by your lonesome.

by Laura Vincent

June 5, 2013, 12:43am

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Let's talk about Idris Elba. More like Idris Elbabe! I have seen this tall drink of sexy in three things: The Wire, Thor, and this one episode of Absolutely Fabulous where he played a gigolo. I haven't seen Luther yet, but I intend to, and in the meantime I have seen lots of diverting gifs from it on Tumblr. Idris Elba just radiates handsome, and has this excellently hot self-assuredness mixed with a kind of quiet thoughtfulness. I was starting to throw around some fancy adjectives to describe his eyes but I really can’t do better than Stacey McGill in the Babysitters Club book “Stacey and the Bad Girls” when talking about U4Me singer Skyllo--his eyes are “huge and vulnerable and strong and when you see them on TV they pull you right out of your seat”. Heavy stuff.

According to Wikipedia he was born in London. I can’t decide if he’s hotter with his American accent in The Wire or his regular London accent, so I’m going to go find as many YouTube clips of him as possible once I’ve finished writing this and watch them 'til I decide. Or black out from how hot he is, whichever comes first.

This crush cake salutes his London roots and also the tea-drinking habit of his most famouscharacter, Stringer Bell. Keeping it Brit, I’ve also loaded it with custard and strawberries, and then covered it in concentric hearts to hide how bad my layering skills with the custard were, then covered that with another heart to hide how bad my concentric heart piping abilities were. Which I then sprinkled with freeze-dried raspberry powder to hide how slapdash my heart-making was. Also because I’m a goddamn food blogger and I have that kind of thing in my cupboard.

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F and line a 30cm x 18 cm tin with baking paper. Or your cake will stick to it. Un-fun fact. In a decent-sized pot, gently melt together 1 cup strong black earl grey tea, 250g butter, and ¼ cup cocoa. Allow it to come to the boil, stirring all the time, and then remove from the heat. Once it’s a little cooler, stir in 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon sifted baking soda, then two cups of sugar and ½ a cup buttermilk. Finally, and make sure it’s not still hot enough to creepily cook them as they hit the mixture, beat in two eggs. Scrape all this into the cake tin and bake for about ½ an hour.

At this point you have a perfectly serviceable chocolate cake. But perfectly serviceable will not catch the eye of Idris Elba. In my mind. If you want it to look like my very earnest creation, slice it in three, make around two cups of custard by following the directions on the packet of custard powder, grab some strawberries (or raspberries, I couldn't find them at the supermarket), layer them up like so: cake, custard, strawberries, cake, custard, strawberries, cake. Then melt a cup of dark chocolate, scrape it into a snap lock bag, snip off one corner and have at it on the cake, followed by white chocolate, allowing the warm melted chocolate to slowly drip like your emotions down the sides of this ridiculously tall cake.

Note:

If you pay attention to one thing on this page it should probably be the pictures of Idris, but apart from that, please sift the goddamn baking soda. Or it will clumpily disperse and make your cake taste like shame. And baking soda.

If you don’t have tea, just use boiling water. I mean, you can sort of taste it in the finished product, but it’s mostly aesthetic conceit.

If you don’t have buttermilk, just use regular milk. It really won’t make any difference.