Brains' Birthday Cake
Brains had his big ol' 40th birthday at the end of April and he asked me to bake his birthday cake. Of course! He usually goes for the chocolate-chocolate-chocolate kind, but this year decided to liven things up with raspberries. Can do, my friend.
Then I looked at my calendar and realised that not only was I not going to be able to come to his party, but that I needed to drop off his cake two days before the event, and I had to put the cake together the night before that. The original idea was to fill the cake with some killer ganache and fresh raspberries, but if I really did do that Thursday night his cake would be all mushy and possibly moldy by Sunday. Even if he did refrigerate it the whole time. So I changed my plans to raspberry ganache (my favorite ganache by the by), and thought about ways to keep the cake chocolaty and moist. After perusing Rose's Heavenly Cakes, I decided to model his cake after the Deep Chocolate Passion Wedding Cake. A two layer chocolate cake syruped with milk chocolate ganache, filled and frosted with raspberry ganache, and glazed in the lacquer glaze.
April 22, 2010
Name of Cake: Chocolaty Chocolate Chocolate
Occasion: Brains' 40th Birthday
Constituents: (named above)
I had planned to spread the making of this cake over four days, however that all fell apart as soon as the week began. I had made Cookie's Hamburger on Sunday, the Whoopie Pies on Monday, and I had planned to make the ganache Monday as well (its a day off, so usually I have the time for long baking projects). The milk chocolate ganache and lacquer glaze were to be made Wednesday after work, and the cake baked and assembled Thursday. The plan was to take the cake with me to work on Friday and deliver it immediately afterwards to Brains' house. As I said, that all fell apart and I made everything Thursday afternoon and evening. It took about six hours!
Firstly, I made the cake, following the recipe Rose gives for the German Chocolate Cake. It's the same cake as the Deep Chocolate Passion Wedding Cake, scaled for two 9 inch layers. I was excited to try my hand at Rose's new breakthrough chocolate cake. This cake is made with oil instead of butter, and is put together sort of like a sponge cake. The eggs are separated, and the yolks and oil are beat together with cocoa powder paste. Rose says to beat until it resembles buttercream, which it sure did.
The dry ingredients are added to the oil/yolk mixture in two parts, and the batter naturally becomes very thick.
The egg whites are then mixed in, without prior whisking, and after being beaten for a couple of minutes the batter is thin and soupy. This gets poured into the 9 in pans, both of which are only 1/4 full, but don't worry; the cakes rise nicely to the top of the pans!
The fun part is that the cakes need to be unmolded as son as they are pulled from the oven in order to preserve what Rose calls "the delicate foam structure" of the cakes. She's not kidding; in the time it took for me to unmold one cake the other had sunk a little sadly in the pan. I think next time I'll leave the other pan in the oven to try and prevent that. And really, in the end, nobody will ever know. Frosting covers a multitude of sins.
As the cakes cooled I flipped to the recipe for the Raspberry Ganache, as found in the recipe for the Moist Raspberry Ganache cake. As I have said before Raspberry Ganache is my favorite ganache to date. I love the tang the raspberries bring to the chocolate. Rose has changed her recipe slightly for Heavenly Cakes to include a bit of white chocolate, which she says tames the tartness of the berries. To be honest I didn't really notice a difference, but I wasn't tasting The Cake Bible's rasp ganache side by side with the Heavenly Cake's rasp ganache...although that would be fun. In my kitchen ganache takes about 3 hours to cool to spreading consistency so I put it all together and set it close to the window to hopefully hasten the cooling process.
After the ganache, I flipped back to the instructions for the wedding cake and made the milk chocolate ganache syrup. Her recipe comes in two batches, one for the 6 and 9 in layers and one batch for the 12 in layers. I decided to multiply the batch for the 6 and 9 in layers by .75 in order to get the right amount for just the 9 in layers. (I derived that number by the instructions when Rose says that 380 grams of the completed syrup is for the 9 in layers.) This syrup is delicious. It smells and looks like the best hot chocolate, and after syruping both cakes I did sneak the leftovers into a mug and drank them! I told Rose that when I met her a few days later and she laughed. I had a hard time finding a milk chocolate that was 40-41% cacao; most were either 38% or closer to 45%, so I did a little of both.
After syruping, the cakes need to set up for at least an hour before they can be frosted. This left me with a pocket of time to do some dishes, eat some dinner, and plan ahead. Reading the instructions for frosting and glazing the cake, I realised that it would be best if the cake was frosted and refrigerated overnight before being glazed. Also, the lacquer glaze itself was better for this cake if it rested overnight in the refrigerator and was reheated in the morning. Luckily, I didn't have to be at work until noon on Friday so I did have time to complete the cake in the morning without having to wake up ridiculously early.
The recipe for the lacquer glaze is in Heavenly Cakes several times, but none of them are for a two layer 9 in cake. I took the proportions for the Bernachon Palet d'or Gateau, which is for a one layer 9 in cake, and multiplied it by 1.5. I reasoned that the circumference was the same but the height was different, and so I didn't need a complete doubling of the recipe. I also knew that I would have leftover glaze, and that it would freeze and defrost fine for another day.
I also realised that I needed a cardboard cake round for the cake so that I could glaze it. Yikes! It was way too late to go out and buy one, so I made my own. I remember Rose saying somewhere that homemade rounds aren't so great as the edges usually aren't smooth. I traced out a 9 in circle on some cardboard using the removable bottom from a tart pan, and cut very slowly and deliberately. I wanted a smooth edge! I have to say, I think I did a pretty good job. I covered this round in heavy duty foil, and when the cake was ready, I filled and frosted it on the round. I heeded Rose's instructions to make the frosting as smooth as possible so that the glaze could cover well and not expose any imperfections. I even heated up my bench scraper to smooth out the sides and top, and to bevel the edge.
At this point, it was close to midnight. The cake was syruped, filled, frosted, and smoothed. The glaze was made and cooled. Everything went into the refrigerator for an overnight, and I hit the sack.
The next morning I reheated the glaze in a double boiler. Rose says it coats best for this cake at 82-85 degrees. When the glaze was pourable I took its temperature and it was about ten degrees hotter than that. I waited for the glaze to cool and by the time the temperature said it was 85 degrees, the glaze looked pretty thick. I trusted my temperature reading and poured it over the cake. It remained thick, and didn't really move so well over the cake. I needed to pull out my offset spatula and pretty much frost the cake with the glaze. This lead to what was probably a pretty thick layer, but as I knew how good the lacquer glaze tastes, I wasn't too worried. I just wondered what went wrong.
Here is where I stopped thinking clearly: I placed the cake on the cake plate without bothering to affix the cardboard round to the plate. This became apparent when I carried the cake out to my car in the cake carrier. By the time I got to the car (half a block away) the cake had slid off the center of the plate and was stuck to one side of the carrier. Argh! I drove to work very slowly and once there, made some tape loops and solved the problem. I shared some of the glaze that had stuck to the inside of the carrier with my first patient, who thought it was incredible.
After work I dropped off the cake, and told him I would try to stop by after my lecture. (I was in a weekend seminar, which is why I couldn't meet Rose and Woody at the book signing Saturday, and why I couldn't come to Brains' birthday party Sunday afternoon. It was a busy weekend!) Sunday evening I had a terrible headache and was so tired from all the week and weekend shenanigans that I told him I wasn't coming, and to save me a piece of his cake. I tried getting in touch with him Tuesday evening, but we didn't talk until Thursday, and he had just eaten the last piece of cake! Dangit!
So although I never got to eat the cake, I did sample pretty much all the individual components, and they were all delicious. So I can only assume the sum was as good, if not better, as its parts. Brains told me that it was the perfect semisweet chocolate bliss. I consider that a sign of a job well done.
Past birthday cakes for the Brains:
2004: Peeps and Fluff
2006: Trying to Live Up to the Name "Evil Cake Lady"
2009: Hard Chocolate Frosting, boo
Then I looked at my calendar and realised that not only was I not going to be able to come to his party, but that I needed to drop off his cake two days before the event, and I had to put the cake together the night before that. The original idea was to fill the cake with some killer ganache and fresh raspberries, but if I really did do that Thursday night his cake would be all mushy and possibly moldy by Sunday. Even if he did refrigerate it the whole time. So I changed my plans to raspberry ganache (my favorite ganache by the by), and thought about ways to keep the cake chocolaty and moist. After perusing Rose's Heavenly Cakes, I decided to model his cake after the Deep Chocolate Passion Wedding Cake. A two layer chocolate cake syruped with milk chocolate ganache, filled and frosted with raspberry ganache, and glazed in the lacquer glaze.
April 22, 2010
Name of Cake: Chocolaty Chocolate Chocolate
Occasion: Brains' 40th Birthday
Constituents: (named above)
I had planned to spread the making of this cake over four days, however that all fell apart as soon as the week began. I had made Cookie's Hamburger on Sunday, the Whoopie Pies on Monday, and I had planned to make the ganache Monday as well (its a day off, so usually I have the time for long baking projects). The milk chocolate ganache and lacquer glaze were to be made Wednesday after work, and the cake baked and assembled Thursday. The plan was to take the cake with me to work on Friday and deliver it immediately afterwards to Brains' house. As I said, that all fell apart and I made everything Thursday afternoon and evening. It took about six hours!
Firstly, I made the cake, following the recipe Rose gives for the German Chocolate Cake. It's the same cake as the Deep Chocolate Passion Wedding Cake, scaled for two 9 inch layers. I was excited to try my hand at Rose's new breakthrough chocolate cake. This cake is made with oil instead of butter, and is put together sort of like a sponge cake. The eggs are separated, and the yolks and oil are beat together with cocoa powder paste. Rose says to beat until it resembles buttercream, which it sure did.
The dry ingredients are added to the oil/yolk mixture in two parts, and the batter naturally becomes very thick.
The egg whites are then mixed in, without prior whisking, and after being beaten for a couple of minutes the batter is thin and soupy. This gets poured into the 9 in pans, both of which are only 1/4 full, but don't worry; the cakes rise nicely to the top of the pans!
The fun part is that the cakes need to be unmolded as son as they are pulled from the oven in order to preserve what Rose calls "the delicate foam structure" of the cakes. She's not kidding; in the time it took for me to unmold one cake the other had sunk a little sadly in the pan. I think next time I'll leave the other pan in the oven to try and prevent that. And really, in the end, nobody will ever know. Frosting covers a multitude of sins.
As the cakes cooled I flipped to the recipe for the Raspberry Ganache, as found in the recipe for the Moist Raspberry Ganache cake. As I have said before Raspberry Ganache is my favorite ganache to date. I love the tang the raspberries bring to the chocolate. Rose has changed her recipe slightly for Heavenly Cakes to include a bit of white chocolate, which she says tames the tartness of the berries. To be honest I didn't really notice a difference, but I wasn't tasting The Cake Bible's rasp ganache side by side with the Heavenly Cake's rasp ganache...although that would be fun. In my kitchen ganache takes about 3 hours to cool to spreading consistency so I put it all together and set it close to the window to hopefully hasten the cooling process.
After the ganache, I flipped back to the instructions for the wedding cake and made the milk chocolate ganache syrup. Her recipe comes in two batches, one for the 6 and 9 in layers and one batch for the 12 in layers. I decided to multiply the batch for the 6 and 9 in layers by .75 in order to get the right amount for just the 9 in layers. (I derived that number by the instructions when Rose says that 380 grams of the completed syrup is for the 9 in layers.) This syrup is delicious. It smells and looks like the best hot chocolate, and after syruping both cakes I did sneak the leftovers into a mug and drank them! I told Rose that when I met her a few days later and she laughed. I had a hard time finding a milk chocolate that was 40-41% cacao; most were either 38% or closer to 45%, so I did a little of both.
After syruping, the cakes need to set up for at least an hour before they can be frosted. This left me with a pocket of time to do some dishes, eat some dinner, and plan ahead. Reading the instructions for frosting and glazing the cake, I realised that it would be best if the cake was frosted and refrigerated overnight before being glazed. Also, the lacquer glaze itself was better for this cake if it rested overnight in the refrigerator and was reheated in the morning. Luckily, I didn't have to be at work until noon on Friday so I did have time to complete the cake in the morning without having to wake up ridiculously early.
The recipe for the lacquer glaze is in Heavenly Cakes several times, but none of them are for a two layer 9 in cake. I took the proportions for the Bernachon Palet d'or Gateau, which is for a one layer 9 in cake, and multiplied it by 1.5. I reasoned that the circumference was the same but the height was different, and so I didn't need a complete doubling of the recipe. I also knew that I would have leftover glaze, and that it would freeze and defrost fine for another day.
I also realised that I needed a cardboard cake round for the cake so that I could glaze it. Yikes! It was way too late to go out and buy one, so I made my own. I remember Rose saying somewhere that homemade rounds aren't so great as the edges usually aren't smooth. I traced out a 9 in circle on some cardboard using the removable bottom from a tart pan, and cut very slowly and deliberately. I wanted a smooth edge! I have to say, I think I did a pretty good job. I covered this round in heavy duty foil, and when the cake was ready, I filled and frosted it on the round. I heeded Rose's instructions to make the frosting as smooth as possible so that the glaze could cover well and not expose any imperfections. I even heated up my bench scraper to smooth out the sides and top, and to bevel the edge.
At this point, it was close to midnight. The cake was syruped, filled, frosted, and smoothed. The glaze was made and cooled. Everything went into the refrigerator for an overnight, and I hit the sack.
The next morning I reheated the glaze in a double boiler. Rose says it coats best for this cake at 82-85 degrees. When the glaze was pourable I took its temperature and it was about ten degrees hotter than that. I waited for the glaze to cool and by the time the temperature said it was 85 degrees, the glaze looked pretty thick. I trusted my temperature reading and poured it over the cake. It remained thick, and didn't really move so well over the cake. I needed to pull out my offset spatula and pretty much frost the cake with the glaze. This lead to what was probably a pretty thick layer, but as I knew how good the lacquer glaze tastes, I wasn't too worried. I just wondered what went wrong.
Here is where I stopped thinking clearly: I placed the cake on the cake plate without bothering to affix the cardboard round to the plate. This became apparent when I carried the cake out to my car in the cake carrier. By the time I got to the car (half a block away) the cake had slid off the center of the plate and was stuck to one side of the carrier. Argh! I drove to work very slowly and once there, made some tape loops and solved the problem. I shared some of the glaze that had stuck to the inside of the carrier with my first patient, who thought it was incredible.
After work I dropped off the cake, and told him I would try to stop by after my lecture. (I was in a weekend seminar, which is why I couldn't meet Rose and Woody at the book signing Saturday, and why I couldn't come to Brains' birthday party Sunday afternoon. It was a busy weekend!) Sunday evening I had a terrible headache and was so tired from all the week and weekend shenanigans that I told him I wasn't coming, and to save me a piece of his cake. I tried getting in touch with him Tuesday evening, but we didn't talk until Thursday, and he had just eaten the last piece of cake! Dangit!
So although I never got to eat the cake, I did sample pretty much all the individual components, and they were all delicious. So I can only assume the sum was as good, if not better, as its parts. Brains told me that it was the perfect semisweet chocolate bliss. I consider that a sign of a job well done.
Past birthday cakes for the Brains:
2004: Peeps and Fluff
2006: Trying to Live Up to the Name "Evil Cake Lady"
2009: Hard Chocolate Frosting, boo
I think anyone must be very lucky to have you as a friend! All that work and you never got a piece, shame! It looks a lovely cake, I would have liked a piece too! Jeannette
ReplyDeleteWow! That was quite the undertaking, and it looks like you pulled it off beautifully! Sounds like an unbelievable cake! If I had an ounce of ambition I would make it immediately. Sadly, I haven't had even a gram of baking ambition since about november. I'm going to have to continue living vicariously through your blog....
ReplyDeleteBeautiful!
ReplyDeleteJeanette, thank you! Were we anywhere near each other, I would happily bake a cake for you, too.
ReplyDeleteAmanda, no baking ambition? Well, you do live nearby, so if you want a cake and don't feel like making it yourself, you know who to hit up.
Vicki, thank you!
Gosh, you really got the ganache smooth. And I am most impressed with your professional bevelled edge. You are so good!
ReplyDeleteThe cake sounds delicious and I would love to have this cake made for me.
Brains, I hope your birthday was made even more special with your custom made ECL cake. Lucky duck!
I am in awe of this undertaking -- so many components! Absolutely beautiful. Happy birthday, Brains!
ReplyDeleteYou mean that after you made this perfect cardboard round, you forgot to use it? And you stayed up until midnight working on this cake? And you never got to taste it? Something is wrong here. I think that Brains should bake YOU a birthday cake.
ReplyDeleteMelinda, thanks! Smoothing out the ganache and beveling the edge took a while, but it was fun.
ReplyDeleteraiuchka, thanks lady!
Marie, I did use the cardboard round, I forgot to tape it to the cake plate. Marie, you may trust Jim to bake your birthday cake, but I have not evolved that far with anybody. Except maybe the Heavenly Cake Bakers!
Oh Jennifer, you are such a good friend. Brains is very lucky. It's a perfect guys cake I think. Even if the glaze was thick, it still looks just great.
ReplyDelete