Chocolate Cake (and 50 posts!)

Oh yeah! It's a celebration, all right. I'm celebrating achieving what I set out to accomplish at the beginning of the year - namely to start a food blog (check!) and to get to fifty posts before the year is up! Looks like I made it! We still have a month and a bit of the year to go but I'm proud of myself for getting there so quickly. This was just the beginning of my journey and I hope you all follow me whilst this blog grows and evolves. Now I've reached 50 posts I've activated another thing on my to-do list but this one's a bit of a secret. Once it's completed I'll let you lovely people in on it. Also this site WILL be changing soon enough with a new logo and hopefully a new design.



















I had hoped to bring you the new design today (and that's partly the reason for the delay) but it's taking longer than I anticipated. To make up for it, I've included a chocolate cake recipe in this post. I made this for my dad's birthday and it went down really well. It's pure chocolate bliss. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.



















Ingredients
Chocolate Cake
200g dark chocolate (I used 76%)
200g butter
1 shot of espresso
175g type '00' pastry flour
2 teaspoons baking power
250g light Muscovado sugar
50g golden caster sugar (optional)
25-50g cocoa
3 eggs
75ml creme fraiche
125ml water

Chocolate Ganache
200g dark chocolate
300ml double cream
4 tbsp caster sugar (optional)


Method
Preheat oven to 140C. Butter and line a 8'' cake tin. Melt 200g of chocolate, the butter and 125ml of water in a pan on a low heat. When fully melted add the shot of espresso to the mixture. In a bowl whisk the eggs until pale and fluffy and beat in the creme fraiche. Add the melted chocolate mixture slowly to the egg mixture mixing constantly. Add the dry ingredients in steps (sugar then flour then baking powder then cocoa) making sure to beat thoroughly so everything is fully incorporated. Pour into the cake tin and bake for 1hr 15mins - 1hr 25mins or when a toothpick inserted into the deepest part of the cake yields dryish crumbs. Cool on a wire rack.

To make the ganache: break up the remaining pieces of chocolate into smallish bits and place in a bowl. Heat up the cream and the sugar in a pan on a medium heat and take off just before it reaches boiling point (it starts to froth but not bubble over). Pour the cream onto the chocolate pieces and whisk until the chocolate melts. Wait for the ganache to cool down slightly before placing in the fridge for half an hour. In the meantime split the chocolate cake horizontally into two. Also make some flakes or curls of chocolate using a sharp knife. Take out the ganache from the fridge and spread 1/4 of it in between the two layers of cake. Sandwich down and spread the remaining 3/4 of ganache onto the surface of the cake with a pallet knife. Place the cake into the fridge for an hour for the ganache to set slightly and serve. Although it might be a bit of overkill some thick cream might be a good contrast to the pure chocolateyness of this cake.