Contents
The Clan Quest Test Kitchen
https://runescape.wiki/images/Stone_of_Jas_detail.png?f5b72 (Image to right of text) Hoods and welcome back to the Questaholic Test Kitchen! Congratulations and thanks to every contributor of the Questaholic magazine past and present for bringing us to the 100th edition! What better way to celebrate a momentous occasion by engaging in a little God Wars bakery? Today folks, we're baking... The Stone of Jas.
I shan't sugar-coat this for you (bar the bake itself), but this isn't one of the easier bakes. I'm inclined to say this is rated four cabbages out of five. Celebrating was never easy! https://runescape.wiki/images/Books_%28The_Lord_of_Vampyrium%2C_Stone_of_Jas_model%29.png?a79ab (Image to left of text)
Ingredients
Cake ingredients
- 300g Plain Flour
- 375g Golden Caster Sugar
- 25g Cocoa Powder
- 175g Butter or Margarine
- 200g Dark Chocolate
- 200g Buttermilk or Natural Yoghurt
- 2 large eggs
- Pinch of Salt
- 1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
- 100ml Boiling Water
Icing and decorative ingredients
- 300g Dark Chocolate
- 150g Butter or Margarine
- 150g Icing Sugar (Keep spare to adjust if necessary)
- Milk (use as needed to adjust)
- Rollable Fondant Icing
- Edible Paint/Glitter (optional)
- To begin we're preheating our oven to 180 degrees Celsius/356 degrees Fahrenheit/Gas mark 4. We're making use of hemisphere tins for this bake which means the recipe will be a little variable depending on the tins you have and what the manufacturer recommends.
- I recommend you follow any cooking guide provided with the tins first, but failing that this guide should be a decent compromise. Depending on the tins your cooking time may differ, so remember to check before turning the oven off that your sponges are cooked through!
- Next we're mixing all our dry ingredients together; Flour, golden sugar, salt, cocoa powder, and bicarbonate of soda. Set aside dry ingredients for the moment.
- Next take your butter and chocolate and gently melt them over medium heat in a pan. Take time to make sure the chocolate doesn't burn as that will affect the taste.
- Following this we're now mixing our dry ingredients with our chocolate butter mix and the remaining wet ingredients (buttermilk, eggs, and boiling water). Mix until the batter has a consistent smooth texture. The batter should not be too thick, so feel free to add milk if you feel the texture should be slightly thinner.
- Before we pour our cake mixture into our tins we want to make sure the sponges do not become stuck to the pans. Your tins should normally have a guide to advise you how to avoid this, but if not then I advise rubbing either a small amount of butter or oil inside the tin. Another trick is to mix butter with flour (and as this is a chocolate cake, a little cocoa as well) to create a thin slurry, and to smear this inside the tin as well. Parchment paper isn't really an option with these style tins!
- Pour the cake mixture into the tins, and divide them equally. Give each tin a small tap against the counter to prevent air pockets.
- Place your tins into the oven, and allow to bake for approximately 45 minutes. I checked the cake throughout to make sure it was cooked through fully and 45 minutes was roughly what it took for these tins to bake.
- Allow the cakes to cool before removing from the tins to reduce the chances of your cakes splitting. Carefully remove them onto a cooling rack once cool enough to handle. If there's any slight breakages then do not panic as we are carving these domes later on for the perfect shape.
- While the sponges cool down we can prepare our icing. Similarly to what we did earlier, we're melting our butter and chocolate together and mixing with our dry ingredients. The icing below is rather thick, and I found myself adding milk for a silkier consistency. Do use caution if you find yourself adjusting the texture though, as we do not want the icing too runny. Adding more icing sugar should remedy a thin consistency.
- Take your sponges and prepare for shaping. I placed a small splodge of icing onto the plate before placing the first sponge on it to help prevent it sliding about. On the flat sides of your sponges place a thin layer of icing to cement the two together, and place on top of each other. I've used a dowel to secure them further in place for icing, trim the dowel as needed.
- Take a sharp knife and begin carving your sponges into a spherical shape. You would think that the sponges would be the perfect sphere shape already and in most cases you'd be right! But we're adding icing to this sponge and shaping it to be what a video game with a certain polygon style thinks is a sphere!Don't be afraid to make big cuts, as anything that breaks can be filled in with icing. Consider saving the cake off-cuts for later use during the decorating segment.
- We're now taking our icing and slathering it all over our sponge. Don't be afraid to be generous with the icing as we want full coverage of the sponge. At this stage it doesn't matter how sloppy the icing is as we're placing the sponge into the fridge afterwards to allow the icing to set. Allow the icing to set for at least an hour, and leave for longer if you feel the icing would benefit from more time in the cold.
- After chilling remove your cake from the fridge and begin smoothing out the icing. I use a cake scraper for this purpose but anything with a smooth surface and hard edge can be used. If you feel parts of the icing are patchy then you can do a second layer of icing and repeat before scraping.
- Next we're rolling out our fondant icing and cutting hexagon shapes to place onto the cake surface. You can cut the hexagons free hand or create a stencil, I found a convenient wooden thing in a hobby shop that was perfect for trimming around.
- Take your fondant hexagons and lightly apply water to one side to adhere it to the cake. Press down gently onto the surface, and be mindful of your placement so the hexagon pattern doesn't appear too skewwhiff .
- At this stage you have technically created the Stone of Jas, but what if we want more?If you've saved the cake cut-offs from earlier than you can use them to create the border that normally sits around the stone. I added a little of the icing to the cake leftovers and modelled it into a sort of sausage to wrap around the cake base.
- Depending on which quest you remember the stone from you may find the stone has a different appearance to other in-game models. For example the Ritual of the Mahjarrat stone is icy blue, the stone featuring in While Guthix Sleeps has a plain brown base, and the stone within Dishonour Among Thieves has gold between the cracks. There's lots of room for variation here and no wrong answer as to which version you want to create. I chose to use some edible glitter paint to recreate the DAT stone for the extra burst of colour!
- But there you have it! By now you should have your very own Stone of Jas, ready to unleash powerful and terrifying Dragonkin upon the land with every use! Are you a False user, or a Stone Toucher?!
Thank you so much for joining me in the Clan Quest Test Kitchen this edition, if you made your own Stone of Jas then I would love nothing more than to see it for myself! A big thanks to everyone on the Questaholic team for helping us to reach 100 editions, and thank you to the readers for supporting us. Unshood for now!