Last week I blogged all about the footy and mentioned that it was finals time. Last Saturday was the biggest event on Melbourne’s calendar (in most of our potentially biased books): the AFL Grand Final. On the Friday I had to travel through the city to get to work and walked past the massive crowds of brown, gold and purple buzzing with excitement during all the pre-final celebrations. It’s one of those moments that make me swell with pride and want to just hug Melbourne in general. I love our game and I love everyone who loves our game. Whether my team has made it or not, I just love footy finals fever.

Despite my attempts to persuade him otherwise, my partner is not a Carlton supporter. While he’s now a Carlton member and is gradually falling in love with my team, and while I keep telling him he really should switch teams, there’s no luring him away from his. Melbournians, and loyal footy fans elsewhere across Australia, are more likely to part with a limb than their life-long team, and so it is with Cameron. He comes from a family of almost all Hawthorn supporters, a family that had a lot to celebrate this year as their team made the grand final. Getting tickets to the AFL grand final also usually requires losing a few limbs. He, his uncle and brother are all Hawks members but still missed out, so we all headed to his place to watch it on telly together.

Cam asked me if I was going to make something for our gathering, and if I’d make him something Hawthorn. I always said I’d never bring myself to make anything opposition-team themed until I’d at least first made something Carlton. With the Carlton cupcakes made for our last final a few weeks ago, I had to oblige. Coming up with the what was effortless once I factored in everyone’s likes and requirements. Cam’s brother and sister-in-law are vegan, so I wanted to make it accessible for everyone. Which, honestly, didn’t require many adjustments at all.

Instead of decorating the outside, I decided to make the whole cake Hawks themed. Hawthorn’s colours are brown and gold (I won’t give you the colloquial name for them), and the player’s guenseys feature the colours in vertical stripes. I started off with my favourite chocolate cake recipe, which is one of those accidentally vegan recipes. Sometimes I leave it vegan, and sometimes I throw in milk for the hell of it. I baked it in a square 25cm cake tin, then cut it into three even strips.

For the gold layer I left out the cocoa and subbed some of the sugar for banana Nesquik. I’d bought some of it a few weeks back as the banana variety is one of Cameron’s favourite things ever, so it seemed an obvious choice. This part was a total experiment on my part, so I was surprised by how flawlessly it worked. But the biggest surprised to us both was how the cake tasted exactly like banana cake. As in the traditional banana cake make with mashed up over-ripe bananas. I was expecting more of a fake/lolly banana flavour.

This cake is about as simple as it gets to bake, and assembling is just as easy. The hardest part is just being gentle with the cakes. The recipe produces and incredibly moist mudcake that wants to crumble with slightest provocation. You need to gently handle, and not over-handle, the layers. But apart from that, it’s a cakewalk.

Assembly is as simple as spreading on a layer of chocolate ganache, piling an opposite coloured layer on top, giving that layer the ganache treatment and comtinuiong until you run out of layers. At this point it makes a nice bumblebee-looking cake.

But I was after a Hawks effect, not bees, so I turned it over onto it’s other side. I trimmed off the edges partially for neatness, but mostly because I wanted to see how the layers had turned out. My main concern for the cake was the the chocolate would be too dark and/or the gold too pale, but the resultant cake was such a perfect match for Hawthorn colours. I couldn’t have planned it any better. That, however, didn’t stop me from constantly hounding Cameron over it for reassurance: “It looks like a guernsey, right? Do you think it looks like a guernsey? Are the stripes too thick? It’s the right shade, yeah? But when you look at it, does it scream Hawthorn guernsey?” Pretty sure he just wanted to eat it.

For the outside, I had thoughts of making a logo or adding other decorations. But in the end I decided to go for a simple ganache. The inside was where the party was at, so I wanted it to look unassuming from the outside.

I smoothed on a crumb coat, waiting for that to set then added another layer of it. when that had set, a dusted on a little icing sugar for contrast.

Finally cutting it open was lots of fun. I had a good idea of what the layers looked like already, but it never really feels over until it’s time to cut into it proper.

The cake was a complete hit with everyone, for both the flavour and the footy aesthetics inside. Whenever I use chocolate dark enough to be vegan, it’s too bitter for me. But even I had to confess to having no problems with it. Cake is really rich and sweet, so it countered how bitter the chocolate was. Cameron would later declare that the cake was what helped Hawthorn march to a convincing Grand Final victory. I’m not sure baked goods produce that amount of luck, but it certainly helped provide a distraction from the nerves as the match unfolded.

The following recipe will provide you with both vegan and non-vegan options. Neither makes much discernible difference to the outcome of the cake. The ganache is a little richer with cream than milk, but both taste phenomenal. If you don’t want to buy Nesquik for the cake, you can sub in any banana flavoring. You could also try folding mushed up bananas through it if that’s the only option available to you. It will likely affect the rise of the cake, but that’s mostly guesswork on my part. Try it and see!