Wednesday, May 31, 2006

More cake pictures

The recipe for these cupcakes is here.

There would be more posts if I wasn't uploading the accompanying photos on dial up.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Chocolate cake

Cake:
150g dark chocolate (the one I used ~72% cocoa solids)
8oz (~225g) butter (unsalted; leave out of fridge to soften)
80z sugar
8oz flour
2 tsp baking powder
4 eggs

Pre-heat oven to 180C

Break the chocolate into pieces and melt over a water bath - glass bowl with chocolate over saucepan of hot water.
Pour into big mixing bowl with softened butter.
Add sugar, flour and baking powder and mix.
Add eggs one by one, mixing between each egg.

Grease and flour cake pan (mine is about 8")

Spoon half the mixture in and bake in the oven for about 18 minutes. My oven is fan heated so cooks faster than a non-fan heated oven. (Maybe about 25 minutes if not fan-heated.)

Place cake on wire rack to cool. I had to bake my cakes in two batches as I only have one tin.

Chocolate ganache filling
150g chocolate (same as above)
200ml double cream
1 tsp vanilla extract

Break chocolate into pieces and place in a heat proof bowl. Heat the cream in a saucepan until little bubbles appear along the edges. Pour the cream into the chocolate and let it sit for a minute. Stir until combined. I had to place it back over a water bath to get some stubborn chocolate bits to melt. Add vanilla.

Let the ganache come down to room temperature and then place in the fridge to set a bit.

Glace icing
150 g icing sugar - sift to get rid of lumps
Indeterminate amount of warm water

Place icing sugar in a bowl, add water until you get a good consistency. Can always add more sugar if it gets too runny. If I had more icing I would have taken it all the way down the sides.

To decorate (mine is not the perfect example of a beautiful cake, but it tastes good):
Spread a layer of ganache on top of one cake and place the other cake on top. Cover the top with the glace icing.

I did the glace icing because my ganache was too bitter for my tastes and I wanted something sweet and sugary.

Keep cake in fridge. I don't like doing this but did so because of limited storage space in the kitchen!