It was my friend Tamara's birthday yesterday and all she wanted was chocolate. Well, that's all she wanted from me. Not being a big chocolate fan myself (I mean, I love the bar form but everything else is way down on my list), I had to search around a little bit to find a cake that sounded good to me and would still be chocolatey enough for the birthday girl. Yet again, food network came to the rescue with this recipe for chocolate fudge cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and chocolate ganache glaze. It's got to be good if the first ingredient is three cups of brown sugar, right?
The cake was delightfully simple to make but murder to get out of the pans. I think I gave myself shaken baby syndrome. The vanilla frosting was also simple as anything and I loved frosting the crumbly cake knowing that it didn't matter in the slightest if the crumbs mixed into the white frosting as it was going to be covered anyway. That didn't stop me from trying, but the crumbs won that little battle. Now, the ganache was of course easy to make, but being the perpetual underestimator of time, I forgot to figure in just how long it was going to have to cool before actually staying on the cake when I poured it on. Numerous trips in and out of the freezer later, I had to leave and could wait no longer so I just let it puddle and called it a design choice. The fruit was only meant for the top of the cake, but I thought sticking it around the bottom might alleviate the awkwardness of the puddling and make it look more intentional. The ganache was also supposed to be opaque, but in its runny state was a bit more on the translucent side. Next time, right?
Anyway, I hear the cake was pretty good so I think I'll keep that one on file for future chocolate lovers.
As an aside, I have always known that the higher quality cocoa one uses the better the cake is going to be. My grocery store apparently doesn't believe in carrying the good stuff, but I was determined to have it so I went up a few blocks to the fancy pants store and found Droste Cocoa, imported from Holland, which did just the trick. Finally, a truly dark and chocolatey cake!
3 comments:
Ann, this cake was not only "pretty good"..it was truly amazing. I have never tasted something so good. You made an already perfect day complete, you are amazing!!!
Wow lady. From your comments, I would picture something less than perfect. That cake is Martha magazine quality on looks alone!
To further attest to how amazing this cake was, people questioned whether candles should be put on in in fear of disfiguring the beautiful cake. I went ahead with the candles as it is still a birthday cake. My fear was more in not dropping the cake when bringing it out during the happy birthday song.
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