It's a colleague's birthday last Friday and since we were not in office, a cake for Monday was in order. This guy has an extremely tooth (or teeth) and having witnessed how he likes his sweet stuff, the best candidate would be a chocolate cake. With some sweet extras.
The cake base is a previous tested recipe (the chocolate and guinness cake), but this time I split the batter into two tins (one of which I eventually broke as I was trying to get the cake out of it). I baked it at 180C for around 35minutes, and let the cakes cool.
After the cakes have cooled, I took one cake, flipped it over and slathered the flat bottom (which is now the top) with homemade plum jam. This version still has a bit of a tart kick to it, which I thought would be good to offset some of the overall sweetness.
After that I placed the other cake, upside down, over the jam covered cake. This is to ensure I have the level bottom as the top part again.
I also made a chocolate ganache (one of the 'extras') by heating 150ml cream and pouring it over 75g bittersweet chocolate, whisking constantly to melt the chocolate. While it is cooling a bit, I brushed the excess crumbs off the cake, and then poured the ganache on top, letting some slide down the sides. Into the fridge it went for 5 minutes. This is my 'crumb coat'. I could have covered the rest of the sides but didn't...
After 5 minutes in the fridge I took it out and poured some more (2nd layer, another extra!). I used some ready made Lindt chocolate as decoration (easy assembly - and the final 'extra') as I know the birthday boy could easily eat all these pieces.
I hope he shares it with the rest of the gang!
Hey, I saw this article on Lifehacker recently -- beetroot in chocolate cake?? Apparently it makes it really moist. (see the comments for the article for folks who've tried it)
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yes! I've read about that before too. I MUST try though one of these days :D
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