Ok, that's quite a description, I'll be making this on Sunday morning wish me luck!
I'm not sure what kind of frosting to choose. I like it to be dark and not too sweet. I also don't like it to be hard. So which one would that be?
My oven has a non-convection setting so that should be fine. It's also a big oven and no, I can't see through the window lol.
OK, so the frosting. I think maybe to start, a dark ganache would be nice. It's soft (doesn't need to be refrigerated) and can be made very dark, and is easy. Buttercreams tend to be light. There's the wonderful pudding based frosting of the "Finally the perfect yellow cake" by BettyR on cheftalk. It's dark and soft, but is a little more tricky. As is her cake, a little more tricky for a beginner. A really great cake, but not the best to learn on as a first cake, and i always think that one should learn on something that is going to work, and only then try something more difficult. You want to have something to gratify you first!
So, a recipe for frosting - this time "light whipped ganache filling and frosting". Source: Beranbaum, Rose Levy (1988)
The Cake Bible. New York: Harper Collins
The ingredients and proportions are taken from the cake bible, the description is embellished by me.
Keep in mind that if your cake broke while coming out of the pan, or is uneven, frosting it is where you save face and cake. This frosting is soft and works well to "glue" pieces together, even just setting two broken halves of a top layer on the soft ganache filling will keep them in place, and the frosting on top will fill in the gap and cover all errors.
Don't begin the frosting until the cake is completely cooled. It should be ready, with the layer you're using on the bottom already on the serving dish. The other should be on the rack.
You can have the cake made from the day before without any loss of quality. That decreases the anxiety level considerably. Just wrap them so they don;t dry out.
Note that if you want to make the cake to bring to a party or something and it's hot out, you can freeze the layers when they're cool, wrapping them completely in plastic first. Then you frost them right out of the freezer the next day and can bring the cake with you without refrigerating. But it's not hot now in new york and you don;t need to do this.
Ganache doesn;t have to be refrigerated because the cream is preserved by the quantity of chocolate in it. In fact some candies are made of ganache. If you do refrigerate it will get harder, losing that soft mouth-filling texture that is so heavenly. If you do refrigerate, then give it enough time to return to room temperature. If you're doing it at home, unless your house is exceptionally hot, i wouldn;t freeze the layers.
If you want to be sure the dish doesn't get dirty with the frosting, put strips of waxed paper or foil around the dish near the base of the cake. Then remove it when you've finished frosting.
This is not difficult. I'm explaining everything, like with the cake, so you can't go wrong. Once you've done it you'll only need to read the parts in bold.
Ingredients
- bittersweet chocolate 8 oz (She calls for 53% chocolate mass - i often use 72% which is my favorite eating chocolate, and the ganache comes darker. You could also use a bit more 53% chocolate to make it darker - like up to 10 oz, to get a darker frosting but before fooling around with a recipe i'd try it as written once). The better quality the chocolate, the better will be the ganache. I would not use chocolate chips, which seem to have soething to make them harder and hold their shape. The best chocolate you can find would be the best to use.
- Heavy cream, 2 cups
- vanilla 1/2 tsp
Refrigerate the bowl and beater (use the wire whisk attachment) - to be extra sure, you can freeze the whisk.
break the chocolate into pieces. Melt chocolate in a bowl in double boiler with 2/3 cup of the cream, keeping the rest of the cream in the refrigerator.
- Melting chocolate with the cream makes it easier, you can't burn the chocolate so easily, and if some steam gets into the chocolate, it's wet anyway. Melting chocolate where there is any small amount of water or liquid (a bit of dampness on the bowl, stirring with a wet spoon, covering the bowl so it develops steam or some of the steam escaping around the double boiler, will make the chocolate seize up, which is very disheartening, it comes like a hard grainy mass. But with the cream in that proportion, it won't seize up).
- You can stir it every so often, and the smaller the pieces of chocolate are, of course, the faster it will be. When there are just a few slivers of chocolate floating around in the now thick chocolate cream, you can remove from the heat and stir till they dissolve completely.
set it aside until the chocolate cream is no longer warm.
- If the cream is warm then when you add it to the other cream it will deflate the cream
- It can be room temperature, but not warm.
- you can speed this up by replacing the water in the bottom of the double boiler with cold water, maybe a couple of ice cubes, but stir it almost constantly or the bottom will harden. Watch it closely.
Put the rest of the cream you've kept in the fridge with the vanilla into the cold mixing bowl and begin to whip at low then higher speed until you BEGIN to see traces of the beater in the surface of the cream
Add the chocolate mixture and beat just until soft peaks form when you lift the beater
- Stop the beater once in a while and lift it. If a bit of the cream (spoonful size) sticks to the beater and makes a peak with a corresponding peak in the cream in the bowl, then it's right. The peak can sort of flop over on the top but the bottom of it should hold its shape.
spread immediately on the completely cooled cake.
- Here you have to have everything ready and work fairly fast. You've already put the bottom layer top side up on the serving dish.
- Put a couple of big spoonsful of frosting on the bottom layer. Spread evenly to the edge, only slightly thicker in the middle since the weight of the top layer will weigh down the frosting and make it squish a little
- Put the top layer, top side down on the frosting. How to do this? Your layer is already top side down on the rack. If it's not sticking deeply into the rack you should be able to slide it off. But if it's sticky, with some soft cake sticking out between the wires of the rack below, you may be afraid. If so, try this (sounds more complicated than it is): Put a cookie sheet on top of the cake (the bottom is up because you reversed it). Turn over rack, cake and cookie sheet together. If the rack is sticky, clean it off so the cake doesn't stick. Put the rack back on the cake. (Now you have your cake layer top side up, with a rack on top of it. Turn it over rack, cake and cookie sheet (now the bottom is up again) . Remove cookie sheet. Now you can slide the cake layer, bottom side up, along the lines of the rack (like tracks) to the edge of the rack. Put the rack slightly above the frosting at a slight angle, the edge of cake layer over edge of cake layer, and push it off as you pull the rack out.
- Put the rest of the cream on top and spread out starting from the center with the back of a spoon, spreading in gentle swirls outward.
- you can decide to make a cake where the sides are not frosted. In this case, stop at the edge and make sure the frosting is evenly distributed.
- if you want the sides frosted, bring the frosting towards the sides all around in a thick ridge, like a wave about to break, so the edge is much higher than the center, and then gradually spread it down and around.
- Do some last touches to the swirls so it looks casual but in more or less even drifts and valleys like a lake in a storm. Too much fussing will let the frosting harden and it won;t swirl well. You want it to look casual but sort of evenly casual. If you do see the frosting hardening, heat your spoon in hot water - get some hot water ina big cup near your work area and dip it and dry it as you work. If your kitchen is cold you might need to occasionally beat the frosting, but the less you touch it the better if it's not necessary. The faster you get it done the less likely it is that it hardens.
Good luck!