Chocolate Cake SHOWDOWN!

VOTE FOR ME!!

It is the time of the year where tinsel tinged malls have erected their giant fir trees that have been put in mothballs for the past 12months and restaurants planning for dinner 'promotions' that will filch away couples' purses. It is the time where colour combinations of red, green and white IS THE à la mode. Yes. With just a little more than a month, the world will be celebrating Christmas!

Other than putting up pictures of our famous Saint Nicholas, chocolate cakes would be the definite must buy/bake/gorge during christmas. Though they usually loom in the form of log cakes, they are nevertheless made of chocolates. Btw, the best chocolate cake ever would be my first chocolate cupcake, baked by my mum, eons years ago. That was probably also the cause of my first toothache and puberty weight gain. Then again Mcdonalds' might still be the culprit (for the weight part)

Anyhow, what i want to blog about is that.. I partook in a chocolate cake bake off. I'm supposed to bake>decorate>photograph>blog>send in, easy as that. Since it's my first challenge, I really want to do a good (bake), dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's!

My Gustatory cells nearly died of happiness~

I'm not a great fan of buttercream, so i melted chocolates with (lite) sour cream instead for the filling, it's not as heavy and can pretty well used to frost the cake. For the deco I piped chocolate ganache over the cake to give a more desirable look. And for the sponge i've added ovalette to give it a smoother and softer texture.

I was actually introduced to Myers Rum by my baking tutor. i heard that the CEO of bakerzin Daniel Tay is also a great fan of that rum. It really satisfied my olfactory system, i would definitely recommend this to every baker.

Even in the pantheon of cocao, this is one helluva chocolate intense cake. From the sponge, filling to the fudge, i admit, it's quite a choco rich bake. All chocoholics would just find it all soooo lovely.

p/s. The winner gets a box of chocolate flown all the way from the other side of the hemisphere!

p/p/s. i'm not sure if it's goin to be a voting event. But if there is, VOTE FOR ME!! if you wanna share the chocs with me!:)

Ingredients

Sponge cake
4 eggs

105g caster sugar

110g flour

20g unsweetened cocoa powder

60g melted butter

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ovalette

1 tsp vanilla essence

45g low fat milk

Rum

Chocolate Frosting

160g 60% (bittersweet) chocolate chopped

160g milk/semi-sweet chocolate chopped

1 1/2cup lite sour cream

Chocolate ganache

80g semi-sweet chocolate chopped

100g heavy cream

Method

Chocolate sponge cake

1. Beat the eggs and milk at low speed.

2. Add the dry ingredients and ovalette, and continue beating at low speed for 1 min then swith to high speed and beat for 6 minutes

3. Add vanilla essence and melted butter to mixture and beat at medium speed until well mixed

Chocolate Frosting

1.Melt chocolate in a double boiler/heatproof bowl over barely simmering water.

2. Beat in the sour cream until well mixed.

Layer cakes to about 1cm (my preference) divide frosting accordding to the number of layers you are planning to set. e.g 3 layers, divide frosting into 4 portions. 4 layers>5 portions so on and so forth.

Dot a little rum on each songe cake layer before spreading the frosting. Use remaining to frost top and sides of the cake.

Chocolate ganache

1. Heat heavy cream to boil.

2. pour heated cream over chocolate and mix until homogeneous.

3. Let it cool a little, and pour over cake. (You can choose to cover the whole cake with the ganache. But be warned, it's goin to be very rich!)

4. Chill for about 15mins.

5. ready for devour

Chocolate Lemon Roulade

Last month I had a bottle of lemon peel mailed to me, i nimbly cached it in my cupboard and completely forgot about it.... It was until yesterday, in my attempt to clear my cupboard that i saw that cute bottle sitting in a corner. The bottle were dusted off and ready for use - Lemon Cake. To be exact, lemon sponge cake layers. I did a little twist for the layering, instead of the 'one above another method' I rolled the lemon sponge cake in a roulade fashion sandwiched in 2 layers of chocolate sponge. Nothing special with this cake accept for the spongeeesnesss.

Btw, the lemon peels originated from France ( in case the words on the picture were too faint) but i bought it from hong kong. This particular store in Tuen Mun sells all kinds of bakery products! I left it with my sis and she mailed it to me last month. It's really unlike those mushy/sticky peels you find at the supermart and btw, you'll only be able to find fruit peels off the shelves (in Singapore) and they are all cut up and mushy. I think the only place that you can find quality peels are from baking stores.. or.. make it yourself.. which might give you a migraine for the long cooking and threaten to burst your gas meter.

I used chocolate ganache for the lemon sponge layers and butter cream between the sweet pastry, chocolate sponge and lemon roulade to 'stick' them together. And lastly, frosted the cake with the leftover buttercream:). One side note, marmalade can be used as a substitute for the buttercream to 'stick' the layers!

It'll take sometime to do the roulade effect but the product is just SO worth it.. For the report, it took me 4 hours to put together the cake.

cut cut~

When rolling the cake, the idea of 'butterfly effect' came to me.. so i scurried to the fridge, found some strawberries, and tried to knife out a butterfly... keke~

Ingredients

Lemon Sponge cake

4 eggs

105g caster sugar

110g flour

10g milk powder

60g melted butter

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ovalette

1 tsp vanilla essence

50g lemon juice

1tbsp lemon peel cut into small pieces

Chocolate Sponge cake
2 eggs
50g caster sugar
55g flour
10g unsweetened cocoa powder
30g melted butter
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ovalette
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
25g low fat milk

Chocolate ganache
80g semi-sweet chocolate chopped
75g heavy cream

Sweet Pastry
100g Butter

50g Icing sugar

1/2 Egg

220g Flour

Butter Cream

50g Water

1oog Sugar

1 tsp Lemon juice

500g butter

Method

Chocolate and lemon sponge cake
1. Beat the eggs and liquids at low speed.
2. Add the dry ingredients and ovalette, and continue beating at low speed for 1 min then swith to high speed and beat for 6 minutes
3. Add vanilla essence and melted butter to mixture and beat at medium speed until well mixed
4. Bake in a 9' cake tin for 35-40mins at 170 degrees celsius

Chocolate ganache
1. Heat heavy cream to boil.
2. pour heated cream over chocolate and mix until homogeneous.
3. Let it cool a little, and spread over lemon sponge strips.

Sweet Pastry

1. Cream the butter and and icing sugar.

2. Add the egg and continue to cream until light.

3. Add in the flour in a few batches and mix until a dough is formed

4. Bake for 10-13 mins at 190 degrees celsius

Butter Cream

1. Combine water, sugar and lemonjuice and bring it to boil. Set aside to cool.

2. Beat butter until light. Then add the liquid mixture and continue beating until light and fluffy.

Layer cake: sweet pastry>buttercream(thin layer)/marmalade>chocolate sponge>buttercream(thin layer)/marmalade>lemon roulade>buttercream(thin layer)/marmalade>chocolate sponge>frost>deco

L'heureux Fleur

Oui. L'heureux Fleur, a direct translation would be " The Happy/Fortunate Flower" LHF, if read carefully, has the same initials as Liang Huifang! muahhaha~ Happy Birthday girl! This cake is named after you! (pardon the tacky name.. that's the best i could come up with my very very rusty french.)

My original plan was: bake the cake (it's actually an angel food cake) in the morning and deliver it to HF somewhat in the afternoon.. BUT! guess what! my first batch literally went down the dustbin!.

1. It tasted "Bluh-eeeeeh"

2. It's not edible even if i dip the whole cake in a pool of chocolate.. nothing can save it!

so having done a year long project, it has really taught us "STUDENTS" (not free labor) to understand why the reaction fails in the first place..

So i went back and tasted all my ingredients and it was obvious.. it's the cream of tartar.. with a closer look.. it has long expired.. 2 years to be exact.. and it was bought just THIS AFTERNOON from the minimart! what the ****! i should have suspected it when the plastic tab was broken when i first used it.. *sigh* i felt so stupid.. if only my brain could process what i saw faster then i wouldn't have wasted all the effort and time..

And VOILA! no surprise for dear HF.. muahha~ i continued to slack till late late evening when i decided to make a trip to parkway to get my fresh batch of cream of tartar.. and there~ the angel food cake aka "L'heureux fleur" done and out of the oven at 9pm singapore time, and the next scene is meng ni gorging down the pretty and "un-bluh-eehh" creation.. sorry HF~ you can imagine and lick the cake off from your screen. It was too late to look for you after all the bluh-ehhing

p/s. don't worry huifang, i have another gift for you that i think you will prefer MORE than the bluh-ehh cake..

p/p/s. dear chris, i've uploaded ur bdae pics by the time you see this msg, i know i'm a slow poke, but u must understand that i'm not as tall as you and thus have shorter legs than urs. it'll take me 1.2X the time needed for an average person..heehee:)

Bdae Cakee

yeah~ BIRTHDAY CAKE for my cousin. Happy birthday GIO! and let's not forget our dear christine's birthday too~ we were havocking last night.. spending our $$ on alcohol that seems never to end.. BUT we all enjoyed ourselves i guess:) It's also the first time i visited clinic at clarke quay.. eh.. didn't turn out the way i thought it would be.. it's just another pub with funny "containers". Anyways.. we continued the night @ dlO ( i think that's what i saw) .. okay.. we did have lotsa of drinks~ but i was still sober enough to wash my face and do the daily routine of toner, lotion, essence and eye cream.. wah~ i think i'm good! peng san after that..

So woke up real early the next day (or the same morning) to bake my favourite little cousin a birthday cake.. it didn't turn out the way i designed it to be in my head.. probably due to the still high alcoholic content in my blood.. i can't seem to cut a perfect square! DAMN!

*side view*

I made choc cake btw and covered it with marshmallow fondaunt.. did a little decoration.. my target was to make it as sweet as possible.. BUT! it still didn't turn out the way i wanted it to be. i wanted to add more colours to it.. but was too lazy and tired to knead in other colours..(yesh i'm sluggish the whole morning) muahhaha~ I did give her some fondaunt to play with.. and she did.. shaped something out.. *please scroll down*

We had fun, and a terrible headache..

So i'm now here blogging on my lastest creation.. not fantastic to me.. i need more birthdays to practice my deco skills! And i really need that collagen drink from shufang to compensate my skin from that crazy nite :(

Gio's Prof. Teddy