Chocolatey Goodness

Chocolate cake + chocolate mascarpone mousse filling + chocolate ganache.

I made this cake for Ryan's mom's birthday. She loves chocolate so I thought I'd pack in as much as I could :). This cake was deliciously moist and flavourful and not too heavy or sweet. 

The recipe for this cake made 2 regular 8"cakes, but I only used one of them torted in half since I didn't want the cake to be too big. Since I'd be covering this cake with a ganache, I wanted to make sure I had a smooth base to work with. Once the cake was filled with the chocolate mousse, I decided to try 'spackling' the outside of it to give it a smooth, uniform surface.

Cake spackle consists of cake crumbs mixed with a bit of icing. This creates a paste that you can apply to the outside of the cake and gives a good, smooth base to work with before covering with icing or fondant. The picture above shows the stacked, filled, and spackled cake. I should have taken a before pic to show the difference! Oh well... next time. You'll notice that the cake is on a cooling rack. I put this rack over a baking tray to catch the excess ganache that was poured over the cake.

The ganache...

This was my first time making a ganache and I was a bit nervous about it. The ingredients are very simple, and it's actually quite easy to make, but hard to perfect. The ingredients consist of heavy cream, chocolate, and butter (optional, but apparently it helps give it a glossy look).

To make the ganache you simply heat up the cream and butter until it comes to a boil, pour over the chocolate, and stir until melted. You want to stir slowly so as not to get too many air bubbles into it (I should have stirred less and slower). It's probably better to have smaller pieces of chocolate so it melts faster (I should have chopped mine). Once that's done, let it cool a bit (I should have let it cool longer) and pour it slowly over the cake starting in the middle and working towards the sides. The chocolate will coat the sides of the cake and the excess will drip into the baking pan below.

The ganache was a good learning experience and there's a lot that I would do differently next time. Because the ganache was too warm, it was too thin and I think it melted some of the spackle, causing a rougher surface. I had to smooth out the top and tried to smooth the sides but it didn't work as well. Ideally it should have been perfectly smooth.

Overall, I think it looked pretty good for a first try and tasted delicious!

What I learned:

• how to make a ganache
• how to spackle a cake

What I would do differently:

• stir the ganache very slowly and as little as possible
• chop the chocolate for easier/quicker melting
• let the ganache cool before pouring over the cake