I met a really nice lady friend, C, at pottery recently. Not only is she good at making pots, she also has very good recipes to share. She lent me "Death by Chocolate" by Marcel Desaulniers and recommended that I try the Chocolate Espresso Fudge Cake. She also mentioned that the cake takes two days to make. My initial thought was, oh well, I will start with something simpler first.
But when I went home and went through the recipes in the book with SS, he was all for the two-day-chocolate-cake. Talk about challenging ourselves...
We wanted to start baking the cake on Sunday, but because of Maisy's demise, I was in no mood. So we did it on Monday night instead. We bought cheapo ingredients for everything except the chocolate, which we used Ghirardelli. (Totally worth the money!)
The cake consisted of three parts: The chocolate cake itself, the espresso ganache, and the chocolate espresso buttercream. The cake was baked on Monday and refrigerated, while the ganache and buttercream were made on Tuesday, and then the cake was assembled.
Everything went pretty smoothly. We didn't have a double boiler, so we just made do with a small pot inside a big pot. We didn't have a slicer to slice the cake horizontally into layers, so we used dental floss. (Yes, they are clean, unflavoured, and they work. So there!) We followed the instructions all the way, until the last part where we had to pipe the ganache using a star-shaped tip, which we didn't have. So we topped the cake with strawberries and just piped it with a cone made from parchment paper with the tip snipped off.
But when I went home and went through the recipes in the book with SS, he was all for the two-day-chocolate-cake. Talk about challenging ourselves...
We wanted to start baking the cake on Sunday, but because of Maisy's demise, I was in no mood. So we did it on Monday night instead. We bought cheapo ingredients for everything except the chocolate, which we used Ghirardelli. (Totally worth the money!)
The cake consisted of three parts: The chocolate cake itself, the espresso ganache, and the chocolate espresso buttercream. The cake was baked on Monday and refrigerated, while the ganache and buttercream were made on Tuesday, and then the cake was assembled.
Everything went pretty smoothly. We didn't have a double boiler, so we just made do with a small pot inside a big pot. We didn't have a slicer to slice the cake horizontally into layers, so we used dental floss. (Yes, they are clean, unflavoured, and they work. So there!) We followed the instructions all the way, until the last part where we had to pipe the ganache using a star-shaped tip, which we didn't have. So we topped the cake with strawberries and just piped it with a cone made from parchment paper with the tip snipped off.
SS did all the spreading of the ganache and buttercream, using a fake plastic credit card as a spatula. He is getting really good at this.
I piped the words. There wasn't enough space for the English words, so we piped it in Chinese instead.
We brought the cake to CY's birthday tonight. The cake was very "solid" (i.e. hard to cut), and someone commented that it is very "high density and there probably isn't any air inside". But it tasted really rich and chocolatey, and I really enjoyed it. I would have enjoyed it more if I didn't stuff myself with the buffet food before that.
I wish we had taken a photo of the inside of the cake, coz the layers looked quite nice. All in all, it was a fun experience. No doubt it was a long process, but Marcel Desaulniers gave very precise instructions which helped tremendously. I am thinking of getting the book now... :P
I wish we had taken a photo of the inside of the cake, coz the layers looked quite nice. All in all, it was a fun experience. No doubt it was a long process, but Marcel Desaulniers gave very precise instructions which helped tremendously. I am thinking of getting the book now... :P
1 comment:
wow wheeee it looook delicious!! may i have the recipe babe haha the cake look bigger than my toaster oven though haha
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