The Baking Bible: ChocolaTea Cake
There are three components to this wonderful cake and they are all pretty easy. It is also pretty boozy so maybe I'm also a bit tipsy.
The cake is an old standby, the moist chocolate genoise, from the Cake Bible. I'll just let Rose describe it to you: "this cake has a light texture of a genoise but is more velvety and moist. An equivalent amount of chocolate is used instead of cocoa, but a special technique is employed to intensify the chocolate." This special technique is cooking the melted chocolate with water to release the flavor (much like what we do with boiling water and cocoa powder for chocolate butter cakes) and letting it thicken until it is puddinglike. It is weird, but if you go all the way back to the Cake Bible Rose makes sense of it all.
Genoise used to scare me because it is one of those cakes that relies on well-beaten eggs to leaven the cake. My cakes would bake into sad little inch-high lumps and I would just have to dream of moist velvety genoise. Luckily, at one point it just sort of clicked and now genoise is another delicious adventure.
I decided to half this recipe and gosh, I kinda love how cute 6 inch two layer cakes are.
The syrup for the genoise consists of black tea and cognac. Which is why I feel a little bit tipsy as I write this.
The ganache is the one we made for the Le Sucess from Rose's Heavenly Cakes. In fact, that ganache looks much better than this one, as this one I overbeat and so it became grainy. So go over there to see what it should look like.
Yummy, rich, and deceptively light. A winner in my book.
The cake is an old standby, the moist chocolate genoise, from the Cake Bible. I'll just let Rose describe it to you: "this cake has a light texture of a genoise but is more velvety and moist. An equivalent amount of chocolate is used instead of cocoa, but a special technique is employed to intensify the chocolate." This special technique is cooking the melted chocolate with water to release the flavor (much like what we do with boiling water and cocoa powder for chocolate butter cakes) and letting it thicken until it is puddinglike. It is weird, but if you go all the way back to the Cake Bible Rose makes sense of it all.
Genoise used to scare me because it is one of those cakes that relies on well-beaten eggs to leaven the cake. My cakes would bake into sad little inch-high lumps and I would just have to dream of moist velvety genoise. Luckily, at one point it just sort of clicked and now genoise is another delicious adventure.
I decided to half this recipe and gosh, I kinda love how cute 6 inch two layer cakes are.
The syrup for the genoise consists of black tea and cognac. Which is why I feel a little bit tipsy as I write this.
The ganache is the one we made for the Le Sucess from Rose's Heavenly Cakes. In fact, that ganache looks much better than this one, as this one I overbeat and so it became grainy. So go over there to see what it should look like.
Yummy, rich, and deceptively light. A winner in my book.
Looks delicious! You can undo graininess by adding a bit more liquid..a bit by bit till you get a smooth ganache again. :)
ReplyDeleteAh! Good to know, thanks Faithy!
ReplyDeleteThis six inch cake is cute! Well, I don't know what magic is needed to click for making a light genoise but whatever it is, still eludes me. It has increased my capacity for swearing though.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info on cooking chocolate. The little cake looks adorable!
ReplyDeleteThe 6 inch is very cute. I thought the cooking of the chocolate was funny too but it made a great chocolate cake.
ReplyDeletePeggy - that's a great tip about grainy chocolate. I didn't know you could fix it.