Chocolate Ganache and Summer Fruits Cake for Charmaine's Birthday

 

We've been lucky enough to spend a few days with my sister Charmaine and her partner Brenna . It's become a bit of a tradition at this time of year. Little Miss 4 loves spending time in Dunedin with Auntie Char Char and we all get to share her birthday celebrations. Last year I made her Sophie Dahl's gluten free chocolate cake, this year I thought I would try Annabel Langbein's Ultimate Chocolate cake. It came highly recommended after Charmaine tried it at a recent wedding. With all this great summer fruit around it was an easy choice to team the cake with boysenberries, blueberries, strawberries, cherries and plums. I used Charmaine's super vintage kitchen equipment to make her cake. I'm not sure how old her Kenwood mixer actually is, but I'm sure it can't be far off the first model. I stayed at the apartment to make the cake while the girls kept LM4 amused at the Dunedin Museum butterfly house.  

Annabelle Langbein's Ultimate Chocolate cake with Chocolate Ganache and Summer Fruits, served with a spiced Plum Compote 

3 cups self raising flour
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
200g butter - softened
1 cup milk
3 large eggs
1 cup boiling hot coffee - I used 3 shots of espresso topped up with boiling water

Preheat the oven to 160deg. C and grease a 25cm spring form tin - that's the type with the clip on the side and the bottom edge that interlocks with the base.

The original recipe just combines all the ingredients in a mixer or food processor and mix or blitz until well combined. Since I was using such a geriatric beater, I decided to stage the mixing a little. I started by beating the butter, sugar and eggs together.







Then I added the sifted dry ingredients, mixed a little, then adding the milk and coffee and beat until it was well mixed.










Place in the prepared tin and bake for about an hour until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.










My cake peaked and cracked a little so I trimmed the crusty bits from the top. The chocolate ganache will cover up any imperfections. 

Leave to cool in the tin for about half an hour before releasing the sides of the cake tin and inverting the cake so the base can be removed. I loosened the base with a knife. Leave the cake to cool completely before decoration or the butter cream will melt.



Chocolate Ganache

250g dark chocolate - I used Whitaker's  70% cocoa solids
250mls cream

Break up the chocolate and place it into a large bowl. Heat the cream until just beginning to boil. Pour the cream over the chocolate.



Stir until it is completely melted and the mixture is smooth. Set aside to set before decorating the cake.










Boysenberry Sauce

1 1/2 cups fresh boysenberries
4 tablespoons sugar

Cook together in a small pot stirring constantly until the mixture is juicy. Now squash the berries using a folk. Cook for a few minutes more then put aside to cool.





Boysenberry Butter cream

5 tablespoons butter
5 tablespoons icing sugar
4 tablespoons hot Boysenberry Sauce 

Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.

Add the hot boysenberry mixture and beat again until the mixture is light and fluffy.

It should be smooth and creamy, not curdled. Test the flavour and add a little lemon juice if it lacks tartness. Put aside until you're ready to decorate the cake.





Spiced Plum Compote

2 cups plum halves with stones removed
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
a few pieces of fresh lemon peel
the juice of half a lemon
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon





Make a syrup from the sugar, water, lemon peel and juice. Boil the syrup for a few minutes before adding the plums. Simmer for no more than 4 or 5 minutes then take from the heat and leave to sit with the lid on until they are needed.

To decorate the cake you will need the Ganache, boysenberry sauce and butter cream and an assortment of summer fruits. We added candles, and LM4 insisted we include a cocktail umbrella as she considers them awesome, especially after Brenna made her a tropical drink with one.

Slice the cake into 3  even layers and separate them out.

Place the bottom layer on a serving plate and spread it with boysenberry sauce, followed by the butter cream. place the next layer on top and repeat the process.






Place the top of the cake on and cover it in Chocolate ganache.











Depending on the ganache's degree of setting, it may be possible to just pour it, otherwise spread it with a knife.
 









Now decorate with the fruits. I started with blueberries, followed by cut strawberries, then the fresh cherries. LM4 helped me to put in the candles and umbrella.

We served the cake with the spiced plum compote and ice cream.

Happy Birthday Charmaine! Thanks for sharing your special day with us!

Chocolate Banana Mud Cake for Brenna's Birthday

Last weekend we were lucky enough to help Brenna celebrate her big three zero birthday. Unfortunately for me 30 is but a distant memory, but a memory all the same, and worth a celebration. Being her normal rushed-off-her-feet self, Charmaine commissioned me to make a cake. Only instructions: she likes bananas, and she liked the look of that mud cake. The solution was simple:

Chocolate Banana Mud Cake with Toffee Frosting

Preheat the oven to 170deg. C and line a line a 22cm loose bottom dish with as much foil as it takes to make it batter tight. The mixture is quite liquid, so I put a length of foil over the round base, then slid the base into the collar, therefore making it watertight.

1/2 cup vegetable oil
250ml cream
50ml espresso
1 cup boiling water
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 eggs, beaten
3 bananas - mashed
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 3/4 cups flour

Sift the flour and cocoa together. Mash the banana.
Place oil in a large mixing bowl and with a whisk stir in the following ingredients one at a time: cream, espresso, water vanilla, eggs, sugar, salt and lastly baking powder. Mix in the banana.

Add the sifted flour and cocoa to the wet mixture and mix well until combined.
Pour into the lined tin. 

Bake for 1 and a half hours, then check by inserting a skewer into the cake to see if it comes out clean. 
Mine required an additional 10 minutes. Cool the cake in the tin. 

Remove the cake from the tin and put onto a serving plate before starting to make the frosting.

Toffee Frosting - a toffee sugar style Italian meringue frosting

175g sugar
1 tablespoon liquid glucose
40ml water
3 egg whites

Separate the eggs. Reserve the egg yolks for another recipe. Beat the egg whites until firm peaks form. Not so much as the whites start to look dry, just stiff enough to stand up when the beater head is raised out of the mixture.

Place sugar, glucose and water into a small saucepan and heat until it reaches 135deg. C. on the sweet thermometer. Don't stir it once it starts to boil or the syrup will turn grainy. It should look a golden toffee colour. 









With the beater motor running, add the toffee to the egg whites a drop at a time. The eggs will form a smooth glossy toffee coloured frosting. The heat cooks the egg whites so no further cooking is needed.
Don't worry if little toffee bits stay in the frosting. It just adds to the affect.

Mum's trusty and very old - like 40 years - Kenwood mixer didn't miss a beat.

With no time to waste, spread the frosting onto the cake before it sets. The recipe makes plenty so you can afford to be generous. 

We didn't have 30 candles, so settled for bananas instead. I tossed them in lemon juice so they wouldn't go brown. 

Brenna getting extra help with her birthday candles.

Happy birthday Brenna. Thanks for sharing your birthday with us. Happy days up at the farm!

Auntie Char's Birthday Cake

We have just had a few lovely days away on holiday. Some of which we spent with my sister in the lovely city of Dunedin. The weather was kind to us while we were there - which was more can could be said the rain, cold wind and snow on the mountains in other parts of the country.

Dunedin is a great place to visit: coming from Christchurch it's a novelty to visit a city with a bustling CBD. We cruised the Octagon for eating places; enjoyed the local produce at the Saturday Market; visited great vintage shops; sweltered in the butterfly house; paddled on the beach at McAndrew Bay; and had tea, feed the fish, and enjoyed as much contemplation as one manages to get with a 3 and a half year old at the very impressive Chinese Gardens.
It was great to spend some time with my sister and  help her to celebrate her birthday. Little Miss 3 had a great time with Auntie Char-Char. Though I think Char may have been looking forward to some quiet time after her departure. Trendy inner city apartments are not ideal places for small children, even when they are big enough to hold a badminton court; Little Miss loved the novelty of it all and we were just glad none of the neighbours complained about the excited squeals.

We thought it would be nice to bake the birthday girl a cake. I gave her a Sophie Dahl cook book for Christmas, so with a few days up my sleeve I had the opportunity to have a good look through it. The recipes look really good and the biographical commentary sprinkled through-out the book make for really interesting reading. Anyway, it was an easy decision to try the flour-less Chocolate Cake. Armed with all the ingredients and my sisters antique Kenwood mixer, the cake came out quite well. I changed the method as Char doesn't have a kitchen whizz. 

Sophie Dahl's Chocolate cake

300g dark semi sweet chocolate
1 cup caster sugar
180ml water
225g butter
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
6 eggs - separated 

Preheat the oven to Bake at 180 deg. C. Grease and line a round 25cm spring form baking tin.
In a large saucepan melt the chocolate, butter and sugar together over a low heat. Take the pan from the heat and whisk in the water until the mixture is smooth. Add the egg yolks and vanilla and whisk again. Set aside.
In a large clean mixer bowl whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff peaks form. Don't over mix: if the whites start to look dry they will be difficult to fold into the cake.
Pour one third of the chocolate mix into the whites and begin to gently fold together. Add the remaining thirds in two steps. Be careful not to knock the air out of the mixture as there is no other raising agent in the recipe.

Bake for approximately 45 minutes. The cake will puff up in the oven, and the centre will still have some wobble. It will sink down once it starts to cool. Let it sit for a few hours before attempting to get it out of the tin.
Dust with icing sugar and whatever fruit you have on hand. At this time of year raspberries would be amazing.






After a really delicious birthday dinner at Two Chefs, we came back to the apartment for birthday cake pudding; I thought the cake would fall into pieces for sure, given I got it out of the oven just before we left for the restaurant, but it stuck together. It's a really rich cake, and needed to be served with the cream. Having no flour makes it perfect for serving to Gluten free guests.