Heavenly Cake Baker: Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache

This week's Heavenly Cake Baker cake is the Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache, page 99, from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Rose's Heavenly Cakes.

I really liked this cake (more than last week) and the ganache frosting (less than last week). The day it was made, the cake was light and very soft; on the following days, the cake was denser, almost like a flourless cake - both "states of cake" were delicious.

I brought about 2/3 of the cake to work - it disappeared in less than an hour and got rave reviews.

In the future, I think I might try this cake with the raspberry ganache from last week's recipe. I liked this cake a lot better than the génoise from last week. Although, after reading this by RLB, maybe I should just keep practicing the génoise until I am more familiar and happy with it.

mise en place for the devil's food cake

ready to bake

gorgeous!

the caramel has been added and the ganache is silky smooth

After several hours - but, I admit, probably not the full 6 - I felt like the ganache was not going to "set up" so I thought I would do a thin layer and then whip the rest to try to speed things along. This lightened the ganache quite a bit  (in color and weight) and also changed the consistency to more of a buttercream texture.

a thin layer of the darker ganache

whipped ganache

a little more frosting for the middle layer

all done - looks great

so light and tender, delicious

Next week is free choice...I'd better start planning!

Bye for now...

Heavenly Cake Baker: Moist Chocolate Raspberry Génoise

This week's Heavenly Cake Baker cake is the Moist Chocolate Raspberry Génoise, page 187, from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Rose's Heavenly Cakes.

This cake was pretty complicated and, for me, a two-day affair. I started last night with the raspberry sauce - a delicious concoction which I will definitely be making again! I want to buy an ice cream machine just so I can make this tart, light, sweet sauce into raspberry ice cream or frozen yogurt. Honestly, it was so good I almost just ate it all last night, straight out of the bowl. Can you tell that I liked it? I need to find some way to use it and lemon curd in a recipe.

One thing that I really appreciate about this cookbook are all of the tips that RLB gives with the recipes. In this one, for example, she tells you to cook down the chocolate for the cake until it "thickens to a puddlinglike consistency...and pool(s) thickly when a little is dropped on its surface." That kind of guidance is very helpful.

Overall, while the finished cake was very pretty and I liked the different pieces that made up the whole, I have mixed feeling about the génoise (which, see below, may actually be my fault). I've only made a génoise once before but I found this one to be almost a little too spongy and kind of dry by the second day. When I put my fork in - it's a bit hard to describe - I felt like the cake separated from the cocoa syrup/ganache instead of being one cohesive bite.

Here is my finished cake - I loved this picture so much I've added it to the header of my blog! My decoration - which I really like - actually came about from a mistake. I had been putting each layer into the fridge between frosting them but by the time I was finishing the top layer, the cake was so cold that the ganache got hard and very matte. I didn't like the look of it at all, so I drizzled some of the leftover cocoa sauce around in a swirly pattern and...voila, pretty again!

love it!

Now, from the beginning...

The raspberries seemed to take forever to start defrosting and giving up their juice. I tried putting the bowl in the oven with the light on and then up under one of the under-cabinet lights without much luck. Finally, after about 4 hours I turned a burner on low and put the bowl as close to it as I could. I felt so accomplished when I finally got a few drips.

so simple, yet so delicious

finally starting to give up its juice

boiling down the raspberry juice

I don't have a food mill so I just pressed the berries through a fine strainer. It took a while but I ended up with about 2/3 c. of puree and then added the raspberry syrup, lemon juice and sugar. Delicious!

my camera doesn't do "red" well...this looks a bit like tomato paste...

ready to be added to the chocolate ganache

I didn't have any cocoa powder so went to a little local market down the street,
which happens to be a Greek grocer. I have no idea whether this is
alkalized or non since everything is in Greek, but I was desperate! It turned out great.

in the cocoa syrup, I substituted raspberry brandy (framboise)
for vanilla, hoping for a little extra raspberry punch

The raspberry ganache was absolutely fabulous! It would be divine over vanilla ice cream. The smell reminded me of those old Dannon chocolate covered raspberry frozen yogurt bars from the '80s/'90s...but warm (does anyone else remember those?). Oh yum.

I also love RLB's food processor method for making ganache. It's so easy and it's lovely to see it come together...and the smell as the chocolate melts...incredible.

mise en place for the raspberry ganache

creamy raspberry swirls

dark and white chocolate, processed into fine bits

pressing through a strainer, look how shiny and pretty

mise en place for the génoise

chocolate, cooked and cooled

adding the eggs to the castor sugar

before beating the egg/sugar mixture

after beating the egg/sugar mixture for 5 minutes - wow

(I'm going to need a bigger spatula...) the flour has been folded in, chocolate is next

it made a lot of batter so I made four extra ramekins for some individual sized cakes

After exactly 25 minutes, the cakes were done. They came out smooth and looking great...until I tried to get them onto the cooling racks. I didn't have enough racks to follow the directions in the cookbook, so I tried to improvise by flipping them on to cardboard covered parchment paper and then onto the cooling rack...big mistake. Both tops were ripped entirely off (and a good-sized chunk on one). It was sad, but since the tops would be cut off anyway, it wasn't too great a loss (except to my ego) and gave me a chance to taste the cake.

very pretty...until...

argh! must. get. more. cooling. racks.

I was very nervous about cutting these cakes in half since they were already pretty thin and my only serrated knife - a bread knife - is kind of thick and shorter than the length of the cake. I was worried things would get ugly (or uneven), fast.

an adventure in not having the right equipment, my makeshift cake turntable

While I actually managed pretty even layers with the first cake, I dropped half of the first layer on the floor as I was attempting to put the cocoa syruped side down on the cake plate. RLB says the génoise is very fragile after you brush on the syrup - she wasn't kidding! So, my four-layered cake became a three-layered cake.

Since I hate soggy cakes - and I felt like I was drenching the layers - I decided at this point to only brush the top of each layer with the cocoa syrup. This change may be what made my finished cake separate a little from the ganache and also seem dry. In the future I would definitely soak both sides!

my poor broken layer

three layers...no one need ever know about the fourth....

one mini ready to enjoy

another mini with some raspberry sauce decoration

the finished cake - pretty!

Can't wait for next week's cake, Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache.

Bye for now...

Avid Baker's Challenge: Old World Braided Coffee Cake

I've joined a second baking "club," the Avid Baker's Challenge. The ABCers bake a monthly selection from Flo Braker's Baking for All Occasions. The March cake is an Old World Braided Coffee Cake, page 166.

I was a little nervous about the braided finish and there isn't a picture in the book so I printed out some of the pictures on this artisan bread site to aid me as I went along. I work much better with a picture or two than by just reading - especially with something like this that seems complicated - so I wanted a little photo guidance. To my relief, the braiding actually turned out to be pretty easy (although my first strip was really tiny so I had to cut the last strips off and tuck them under the first two baby-strips).

Overall, this was a pretty easy cake/bread to make (it's called a coffee cake but the texture is more like a bread, in my opinion) and a small piece was very filling...I can't wait to have another slice tomorrow morning with coffee. The dough itself sort of reminded me of a Portuguese sweet bread - which I love - but the filling was a bit too "wet" for my taste and did not really meld or get incorporated into the dough like most coffee cakes I've had. I think that's why it seemed more like a bread with a nutty-cinnamon filling.

So, even though it wasn't quite what I expected in the end, I really liked working with the dough - it was so well behaved and easy to roll out. I think if I try this one again I would skip adding the egg whites to the nut mixture, use a little less cream, and then maybe roll it up like a roulade, slice it and bake it like cinnamon buns and then top it off with some cream cheese icing. I think adding some lemon zest to the dough and lemon juice to the filling would also be delicious.

mise en place for the dough

sticky sticky sticky dough

ready to knead

five minutes (of kneading) is a long time, but it came out nice and smooth

I used pecans instead of walnuts

finely ground

I also added some freshly ground nutmeg

mise en place for the filling

time for a wine break...la dee da...

nuts and cream mixture, waiting for the whipped egg whites

first rise done and ready to roll out
(didn't exactly double in size, but my fingertip indentation remained in the dough)

it was so easy to manage this dough (unlike my poor Kouign Amann)

something went wrong with cutting my first little strip but the rest was easy

all done...cool!

baked to a golden brown

it smells so delicious

yum

time to sample a slice

Bye for now...