Chocolate Checkerboard Cake with Strawberries

Last Monday was one of my friends' birthday. Unfortunately, this last week was also one of the busiest weeks of the semester, being midterms time. Due to this quite pressing engagement, we couldn't really celebrate. My cousin and I thought we should do something at least, however, as we are usually on Fall break when her birthday comes around. This year, however, our semester somehow got moved up a week, so we are actually on campus on her birthday.

I know that she likes chocolate. Instead of doing boring plain chocolate cake, however, I thought I'd alternate dark and white chocolate in a checkerboard cake. I decided to stick to two mudcake recipes (like the ones I used in the Christmas tree cake) but ended up with a bit less white chocolate mudcake than dark. I thus had to chop some off in order to make it somewhat equal. I thought I'd just chop off the top, domed part, and just stick a layer of white and a layer of dark, and invert 1/3 of that for a 2-layer cake.

As you can see, however, I ended up including the domed parts, cut into strips, for a third, somewhat smaller layer. I just didn't want the cake to be too flat... The strips of cake were attached together with a dark chocolate ganache.

I thawed some frozen strawberries (fresh ones being a bit too pricey now for my student wallet), drained them, and sliced them. I "glued" them over the seams on the top with some melted dark chocolate, then I arranged whatever leftover I had a bit around. These provided a nice refreshing touch to counter the sweetness of the chocolate. For contrast, I added words of white chocolate that I wrote on a small piece of baking paper and stuck in the freezer to set.

The two cakes should probably have been refrigerated before I cut them, as they somewhat crumbled when I tried arranging them right after they just cooled to room temperature. In the end, after the ganache and the cooling in the fridge, they stayed together nicely.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients

     Dark Chocolate Mudcake

• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup tepid water
• 1 tsp vinegar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

     White Chocolate Mudcake

• 1 cup sifted flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup soymilk or other milk
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tbs vinegar
• 100 g white chocolate, melted

     Chocolate Ganache

• 150 g chocolate, chopped
• 75 mL (~1/3 cup) heavy cream

  Procedure

     Dark Chocolate Mudcake

1. Preheat oven at 180°C. Grease and line a loaf pan.
2. Sift together all dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix together wet ingredients.
3. Make a well in the dry ingredients, and pour in the wet ingredients. Mix well
4. Pour into the pan, and tap the pan against the table/working surface to release trapped bubbles.
5. Bake 30-35 minutes or until well risen and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out dry.
6. Leave to cool in the tin for 20 mins, then remove to cool completely.

     White Chocolate Mudcake

1. Preheat oven at 180°C. Grease and line a loaf pan.
2. In a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients.
3. Melt the chocolate.
4. Add the soymilk, oil, chocolate, and vinegar to the dry ingredients mix.
5. Mix until smooth.
6. Pour into the pan, and tap it against the table or working surface to release trapped bubbles.
7. Bake for 20-30 mins.
8. Cool.

     Chocolate Ganache

1.  Place the chocolate in a medium bowl.
2. Heat cream until boiling.
3. Pour cream over chocolate, and mix until all chocolate is melted.

     Assembly

1. Cut the two cakes into even layers. Spread ganache on one of the layers, then top it with a layer of the other one. Repeat if there is sufficient cake remaining.
2. Cut the assembly into 3, lengthwise.
3. On a surface, set down the edge piece. Spread some ganache on the inside-facing side of it.
4. Turn the middle row upside down, then set it next to the edge piece, pressing slightly for it to adhere.
5. Spread more ganache on the bare side of the middle piece, and add the remaining edge piece.
6. If desired, cover the whole cake in ganache or other icing.
7. Refrigerate before serving.

  Tips

• Ideally, the recipe quantities should be tweaked to make 2 cakes of equal height. In that case, 2 cakes of opposing patterns can be made.
• Refrigerating the cakes before cutting them will make them a bit firmer and thus less likely to crumble.
• If there are remaining cut-offs of the cakes (like from the domes), they can be made into cake pops.
• Other cakes and flavors or icings can be used to make such a cake.
• Using vegan chocolate and non-dairy cream will make this cake vegan.

Christmas Tree Cake

When I saw Cakecrumb's cake, and her tutorial as to how to make it, I knew I had to try making it. But first on a small scale. I basically followed her recipe for the cakes, except I used egg replacer instead of eggs. I must say I did not expect the dark chocolate to rise so much, and since I had divided it into two little springform pans (roughly 12 cm each).

I had a bit of a hard time carving the dark chocolate mudcake to put in the white cake mix due to a lack of round cookie cutters. As mentioned previously, I have been using emptied tomato concentrate cans to cut cookies. For these, I had to use various objects to approximate the round shapes -- from a simple knotted thread pulled taut from the central toothpick, to small cups and glasses. I couldn't be sure how successful the inside would be until the cutting.

Seems it was at least mostly a success! I was very afraid that the cake would be overly sweet, especially the white part, since it has a lot of white chocolate and it's mixed with white chocolate ganache. But seems the nap in the fridge (and me reducing the amount of sugar by almost half) did the trick to make it pleasant to the tongue without being overly sweet.

For the decorations, I simply piped some Christmas trees using white chocolate, and a small 6-pointed pseudo snowflake from the little remaining at the end. The one at the top was piped as 4 separate half trees. I then used a knife dipped in hot water then dried, and pressed against the edge to "glue" together, to melt the chocolate into a flat surface to attach to the other parts.

Definitely a recipe to try again, but not too often, as the 2-hour baking time for the white cake is not something I can do a lot.

With the carved-out scraps and cut off domes from the dark chocolate cake, and what remained of the crumb mix from the white chocolate cake, I made little cake truffles with leftover ganache and some coconut.

Christmas 2014 Gifts

Whew! Now that I am done posting all the stuff I baked during the semester, when I was too busy to post, it's time to post recent baking!

Like for a couple of the past years (2011 and 2013), I made little pack of baked goods to give out as gifts for Christmas. As usual, procrastination prevailed and I started on the evening of the 23rd of December.

I started out by making the dough for cookies. I had made these cookies a couple of weeks ago, and they're easy enough to make, and since Christmas baking means making a lot of cookies, I opted for these cookies.

A lot of rolling out, cutting with an emptied can of tomato concentrate, and baking later, I ended up with some 195 cookies. These were the first things in the little bags of goods.

I then made some chocolate cakes (white and dark) for another cake that I will post later. With the leftover scraps, I made little cake truffles, mixing cake crumbs with chocolate ganache. I rolled them in some desiccated coconut (and the white cake ones have coconut mixed inside as well).

I wrapped these in some cellophane film to keep them from moistening the cookies when in the little package. The dark choc ones were made after Christmas, so they only got added to the later packets.

Halloween Scary Faced Cake Pops

November 3rd

I made these for a hallway dinner that was Halloween themed. Not really knowing what to do, I took leftover cake crumbs and frosting from the Sinterklaas cupcakes, and made them into cake pops. Then I tried to melt some chocolate sprinkles to try and draw creepy faces (not easy when they were upside down...)

Sinterklaas Cupcakes

For some weird reason, we had a super early Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) themed Hallway dinner yesterday. Sinterklaas is usually celebrated on December 5th... Being truly out of ideas, I decided to go with cupcakes, and let the theme be made out of decorations.

The cupcakes are plain, vegan cupcakes in which I added a dash of cinnamon and a hint of nutmeg. I made some spéculoos (speculaas in Dutch) flavored  frosting by making a batch of frosting and mixing in a couple of large scoops of spreadable spéculoos (also known as cookie butter in certain places). I also crushed a spéculoos cookie and sprinkled that on top of the frosting.

The decorations are piped white chocolate (that started melting and not holding shape as I was putting them on the cupcakes. They represent the hat and staff that Sinterklaas usually sports.

White Choc Chip Cookies with Lemon

These cookies were baked on August 18th, 2014. I brought them on my second to last day at the Dutch summer course I was taking. Since I left about a week early due to university schedule clashing, I thought I would treat my teacher and classmates. We were together for a short time -- merely 3 weeks -- but I felt that we bonded a lot more than I would've ever expected.

The labels are hand-made. I got the translation of "White Chocolate Chip Cookies with brown sugar and lemon" from what I learned and Google Translate (so forgive any mistakes ^^).

I admit I probably am getting into the habit of bringing baked goods whenever I'm somewhere, or need to say "bye" to someone.

I baked these cookies with some lemon in them because I usually curb the sweetness with some walnuts, but since I didn't have any, I cut down on the sugar and added the tartness and fragrance of lemon.

I just realized that I have never posted the recipe I usually use for making chocolate chip cookies, despite having made them quite a few times. Well this one's a tweak on the recipe, but I guess it'll have to serve for now. I'll post the original recipe properly the next time I make choc chip cookies.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup golden sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• zest 1 lemon
• 2 tsp Orgran egg replacer
• 4 tbs water
• 3 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp hot water
• 1 cup white chocolate chips

  Procedure

1. Preheat oven 175°C.
2. Cream butter and all sugar until smooth. Add in lemon juice and zest.
3. Mix the egg replacer and the 4 tbs water (proportions ~2 eggs) and beat them into the mixture.
4. Dissolve baking soda into the hot water before adding.
5. Stir in flour and chocolate chips.
6. Put on baking sheet by large spoonfuls.
7. Bake for 10-15 mins.