Our friends Jim and Colleen hosted us at their Superbowl gathering, and I was tasked with bringing dessert. Because it was a small group, I wanted to make a small cake. I decided to try Rose Levy Beranbaum's "Chocolate Layer Cake with Caramel Ganache," which she describes as having "a soft light texture that magically transforms to full-flavored fudge in the mouth." Even though it's a two-layer cake, you bake one cake in a single 9-inch by 2-inch round pan and split it to create the two layers, so I knew the finished cake would not be more than two inches tall.
The recipe instructs you to make the ganache several hours in advance, and having experienced the agony of trying to frost a cake with ganache that is too soft, I took no chances and made the ganache in the morning. You start by making a caramel from water and sugar. You heat the caramel to 370 degrees, add heavy cream, and stir in a little butter. Separately, you grate unsweetened chocolate in the food processor. Then, with the motor running, you add the hot caramel mixture to the chocolate and process until the mixture is smooth, adding vanilla at the end. You set the ganache aside at room temperature to cool and thicken. The recipe says this will take about three hours, but I found that mine was a perfect texture after about four hours.
After I made the ganache, I worked on the cake. It's a high-ratio cake where the weight of the sugar exceeds the weight of the flour, and it's mixed according to the high-ratio method: you mix together all of the dry ingredients (cake flour, sugar, baking powder, salt); add the fats (room temperature butter, oil, and cocoa dissolved in boiling water); and add the wet ingredients in several parts (eggs, water, and vanilla). You pour the batter into a greased and parchment-lined pan and bake.
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The cake did not rise much in the oven. After it was cool, I leveled it and split it into two layers that were each about three-quarters of an inch thick. (I am now able to level and split cakes with ease, since my very generous cousin Cindy gave me an Agbay cake leveler for Christmas. It's pretty awesome, and now my layer cakes look much more professional.) The cooled ganache spread beautifully and held up well at room temperature.
I tasted the ganache before I frosted the cake and it was disconcerting. First, I couldn't taste the caramel at all, which was disappointing. Second, and more importantly, the ganache was extremely bitter. In the recipe headnote, Beranbaum says that she deliberately created the ganache with unsweetened chocolate to temper the sweetness of the caramel. But I found it to be at the barely tolerable end of the bitterness spectrum; it reminded me a bit of the frosting for the Sunday Night Cake, which also uses unsweetened chocolate and was quite bitter. Because I was concerned about the bitter ganache, I decided to serve the cake with ice cream to add some sweetness.
The cake itself was very chocolatey and tender, and quite delicious. Although the bitterness of the ganache was not as jarring when eaten with the cake, I still found it to be mouth-puckeringly astringent. Still, everyone cleaned their plates. The ice cream was a good accompaniment and lightly-sweetened whipped cream would also have been nice. If I make this cake again, I would make the ganache with bittersweet chocolate -- but even made exactly as written, I consider the cake a Superbowl baked goods victory.
Recipe: "Chocolate Layer Cake with Caramel Ganache" from Rose's Heavenly Cakes by Rose Levy Beranbaum.
The recipe instructs you to make the ganache several hours in advance, and having experienced the agony of trying to frost a cake with ganache that is too soft, I took no chances and made the ganache in the morning. You start by making a caramel from water and sugar. You heat the caramel to 370 degrees, add heavy cream, and stir in a little butter. Separately, you grate unsweetened chocolate in the food processor. Then, with the motor running, you add the hot caramel mixture to the chocolate and process until the mixture is smooth, adding vanilla at the end. You set the ganache aside at room temperature to cool and thicken. The recipe says this will take about three hours, but I found that mine was a perfect texture after about four hours.
After I made the ganache, I worked on the cake. It's a high-ratio cake where the weight of the sugar exceeds the weight of the flour, and it's mixed according to the high-ratio method: you mix together all of the dry ingredients (cake flour, sugar, baking powder, salt); add the fats (room temperature butter, oil, and cocoa dissolved in boiling water); and add the wet ingredients in several parts (eggs, water, and vanilla). You pour the batter into a greased and parchment-lined pan and bake.
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The cake itself was very chocolatey and tender, and quite delicious. Although the bitterness of the ganache was not as jarring when eaten with the cake, I still found it to be mouth-puckeringly astringent. Still, everyone cleaned their plates. The ice cream was a good accompaniment and lightly-sweetened whipped cream would also have been nice. If I make this cake again, I would make the ganache with bittersweet chocolate -- but even made exactly as written, I consider the cake a Superbowl baked goods victory.
Recipe: "Chocolate Layer Cake with Caramel Ganache" from Rose's Heavenly Cakes by Rose Levy Beranbaum.
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