When I went to Culinary school my mom never asked me to make anything in particular until my second year when I returned for Christmas, when she had a long list of things she had seen or eaten that she wanted me to recreate.
Among these was a chocolate cake with "that delicious chocolate ganache frosting." Luckily, at the school I go to we have a small 3-week crash course in Baking and Pastry techniques at the beginning of sophomore year. I pulled out my recipe for a simple genoise, French sponge cake, and began the break down from there.
I wouldn't just do a cake with chocolate ganache, bit boring to me (though my baking skills have suffered recently). Chocolate genoise soaked in Kahlua simple syrup, layered with chocolate Italian buttercream and then, and only then, covered in chocolate ganache. Sounds like a better idea to me…and who doesn't love a bit of Kahlua and Chocolate? Chef Carla Hall, from Top Chef and now The Chew fame, says she prefers to eat her alcohol, I agree.
So I started the cake portion and kahlua syrup on Monday and refrigerated it, thinking I would make the rest of its components Tuesday. Woke up Tuesday and got the recipe for buttercream and realized eggs had mysteriously left the house again. So I threw the cake in the freezer. Wednesday came around and I was determined to make it. So I pulled the cake from the freezer and set it on the counter. 14 hrs later, no eggs and I put the cake in the refrigerator. Thursday morning the cake was hard, dense, and disgusting...so once I got eggs from my hand-dandy BFFL I remade the cake, this time it came out much better. The syrup was still good, albeit weaker than I may have liked.
My friend and I busted out the buttercream in no time and I had assembled the four layer cake and gotten the ganache together. Would've liked the ganache to be a bit thicker, which I remedied in the recipes below. My mom tasted it and like the good mother she is looked at the cake, then back at me, smacked her lips obnoxiously and said "It's not very sweet". And then like the good friend I have is, mimicked saying, "No...it needs...some raspberry jam or something!". Four days of hard work and my selfish family and friends have nothing good to say. Contrarily, I enjoyed the cake for someone who's not a big chocolate fan and my mother later ate a small piece after our delicious Papa John's, a piece served underneath a scoop of ice cream which she claimed added needed sweetness. Go figure. Why am I spending $120k on my education?
This picture makes this cake look beautiful, I just wanna say.
Recipes after the break
