Chocolate Almond Layer cake

I am so happy to present my 50^th post. Never thought I could achieve this in 5 months. I would like to thank all my fellow bloggers, friends and family for your continuous support and encouragement.

Here is the other cake which I had made to celebrate the birth of our nephew. This is also from Passionate about baking, with a lot more changes from the original recipe.

Ingredients for cake:

All purpose flour                  --    ½ cup + 1/8 cup

Cocoa  powder                      --    ½ cup

Icing Sugar                           --    1 ½ cup

Eggs                                       --    6 big eggs separated

Vanilla extract                      --    1 tsp

Ingredients for filling:

Whipping cream                    --    1 cup

Icing Sugar                             --    4 – 5 tbsp

Slivered almonds                  --    100 gms. This would be sufficient to decorate the sides as well.

Ingredients for Ganache icing:

Whipping cream                    --    ½ cup

Dark chocolate                       --   150 gms broken into pieces.

Instant coffee                         --    1 tsp

Preparation of Cake:

Preheat the oven to 350F. Prepare a 9 inch pan lined with butter and dusted with flour. You can either use 2 pans or prepare this in one single pan and cut horizontally. I had 2 pans and so baked together.

Sift the cocoa and the flour.

Separate the egg white and yolks. Beat the egg whites till they stand soft in peaks. Keep aside.

 

Whisk the egg yolks and sugar until they form a thick mixture.

Gently fold a third of the flour mixture, then a third of the egg whites. Repeat until all the flour mixture & egg whites have been incorporated.

 

Divide the batter equally and pour into the prepared baking pans. Bake for 15 – 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean from the centre of the cake.

If the cake has a bulge on the top, cover the cake with a clean, wet kitchen towel and gently press it downwards, so that u get a flat cake. This helps during icing the cake.

Cool in the tin for 10 minutes and let it cool completely o a wire rack.

Preparation of filling:

Whip the cream and sugar until soft. Fold in almonds or nuts if you wish to. (I used plain cream and did spread the almonds over it on the cake.)

Preparation of Ganache:

Keep the chocolate pieces in a heat proof bowl. Boil the cream in a sauce pan. Do not let it foam and rise. Pour it in to the bowl with chocolate and mix them well using a whisk. Add the coffee powder and mix well.  Keep it aside and let it cool. This mixture thickens as it cools. If it thickens more than the spreadable consistency, slightly heat it in the microwave.

Assembling & Decorating the Cake:

Prepare a cake board. I used a card board, cut it into shape and covered it with foil paper.

Take a bit of the whipped cream filling on your knife (which I used instead of the angled spatula) and spread it in the centre of your board. This is done to stick the cake on to the board. Place the first cake on the board.

Evenly spread the whipped cream on the cake. Drop in few slivered almonds on the top of the spread cream.

 

Place the next cake over the icing. Now you have a sandwiched cake. Let it set for a while. You can keep it in the refrigerator for 15 – 20 min. (optional).

Now comes the decoration part. I spread the rest of the whipped cream on the sides of the cake using the spatula and stuck the slivered almonds on the sides using a fork.

Pour the Ganache slowly on top of the cake and let it slightly drip through the sides.

The light brown balls what you see on the sides are small meringues.

Ingredients:

            Egg white                  --   1 medium size

            Powdered sugar       --   ¼ cup

            Cocoa powder           --    1 tsp.

Preparation:

Beat the egg whites until they are soft. Add in the sugar a spoon at a time and beat until they are well combined and let them form stiff peaks.

Fold in the cocoa powder. Fill the mixture in the piping bag/ Ziploc cover and pipe out required shapes on a greased foil/parchment paper.

Bake in a preheated oven @ 200F for 45 – 50 min. Keep an eye and make sure they are not burnt. The time depends on the thickness of the meringues. 

            The next I did was spread some grated almond milk chocolate in between the  meringues.

Finally, made the rose in the middle of the cake. Mix icing sugar into the left over whipped cream until you get a dough consistency. Sorry that I did not notice the exact measure as I did not have an idea of making a rose. That was just a trial which was a success. Make petals out of the dough and let is set and cool in the refrigerator for atleast an hour.