Chocolate Orange Cloud Gateau

First let me share my happiness on winning the give away @ RV's Food for 7 Stages of Life. I never expected this and couldn't believe it. My first lottery  J

Now I am confused on what to get from CSN stores. Can anyone help me to choose something? I would like to get something into my kitchen and ofcourse something I can carry back to India. Have anyone heard/used the yogurt maker? We get atleast 1 qt of yogurt every week as AJ loves to have it with everything. So I thought this would be useful. Though I tried multiple times I was never able to prepare yogurt with the same consistency as the store bought ones. Does anyone has any other tips for me so that I can choose something else from CSN JJ Pretty confused right... Ok, now leaving these let me take you to today's post.

I prepared this cake to celebrate the arrival of our nephew (on 2nd July), a new addition to our family and of course the first one in the next generation. I prepared two cakes and did upload the pics in facebook and orkut. Was a bit lazy to work with the pics (as I had many of the same kind) and got delayed. Now decided to share something sweet for this sweet victory J

I adopted the recipe from Passionate about baking, where we have a number of cute cake recipes. With some modifications on the recipe and of course the decorations too, here it is.

Ingredients for cake:

All purpose flour              --    1 ¼ cup

Baking powder                   --    2 tsp

Corn Flour                           --    4 tbsp

Icing Sugar                          --    1 ¼ cup

Salt                                          --    a pinch

Eggs                                        --    3 big eggs separated

Water                                     --    5 tbsp

Oil                                            --    5 tbsp

Orange Juice                       --    1 tbsp

Zest of orange                     --    1 orange

Ingredients for filling:

Whipping cream                --    ¾ cup

Icing Sugar                          --    2 – 3 tbsp

Ingredients for Ganache icing:

Whipping cream                --    ½ cup

Dark chocolate                   --    150 gms broken into pieces. Keep an extra bar to garnish the sides.

Preparation of Cake:

Preheat the oven to 350F. Prepare an 8 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 neither had 2 pans nor wanted to take the risk of cutting the cakes and hence baked it twice in the same pan.

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

Mix the flour, corn flour, baking powder, salt and icing sugar. Sift the mix 3 -4 times. Sifting helps to mix the powders thoroughly. Keep it aside.

Lightly beat the egg yolks with water and oil.

Add this to the dry ingredients and beat until smooth.

 

Stir in the orange juice and the zest.

Fold the egg whites gently into the mix.

Pour the mix into the prepared tray and bake 15 to 20 minutes (Mine was done in 15 min). Check if a tooth pick comes out neat.

If you feel that the cake turns too much brown on the top, slide a sheet of foil on the pan.

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.

 

Leave the cake in the pan for 10 min. and let it completely cool on 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)

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. 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 the Cake:

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

I did not have a turn table. It’s always easy to work with the cake keeping it at a certain height from the table. I used my trivets and steel plates to form the cake table J

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.

Fill the whipped cream into a zip loc cover. Push the cream towards the bottom corner of the bag. Using your scissors cut a small hole at that corner. Here is your piping bag.

Pipe the whipped cream on the cake and then spread it well using your spatula. You can directly apply the cream on to the cake with you spatula. I did it this way just to ease the spreading work and as a practice to pipe the cream to decorate the icingJ.

  

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).

Pour the Ganache over the cake and spread it well on the top and the sides. Decorate the cake as per you likings.

I did do a small piping work on the sides with the left over cream. Grated the chocolate bar and spread the chunks on the Ganache using a fork. Also placed few orange pieces in the centre of the cake.

I was so excited to finish the cake and was totally concentrated on the work I did and forgot to click snaps at each step. I shall definitely do it next time and have more steps shown.

As mentioned before, I have one more cake to present before you, and let me reserve it for my 50^th post.