Too easy chocolate cake with chocolate ganache

Too easy chocolate cake with chocolate ganache

It was my son's 7th birthday today, and we were having the grandparents, aunty, uncle and cousins over for birthday cake and coffee. I decided to make the BCB Too easy chocolate cake as his birthday cake. I hadn't made it before so I wasn't sure how big the cake would turn out. I used a spring form tin and made one batch. It turned out about the right thickness for one layer of a 2 layer cake that could be filled with jam and cream, so I made a second one.

The making of the cake was as described - too easy! Basically, just melt the butter, then add in the rest of the ingredients and mix it together, then bake. Doesn't get much easier than that! I must admit, I much prefer cake recipes that require melted butter rather than creaming the butter. Even in the thermie I find that i need to scrape the butter down multiple times, which can get a bit cumbersome when you have to keep waiting for the arms to release the lid!

Once the 2 cakes were baked and cooled, I sliced a little of the top of the base piece, so it was nice and flat. I warmed up a bit of strawberry jam and spread that over to base piece and then added some fresh whipped cream over the jam.

To make the ganache I semi-followed the BCB recipe. However, from previous experience I knew the resulting ganache was quite runny, and doesn't set firm on a cake. I use the method of the ganache on the chip, but the quantities are slightly different, in order to have a firm-set ganache, similar to the one you would get on a supermarket mud cake. I always use the ratio of half cream to the amount of chocolate. In this case I used 150g of dark cooking chocolate and 75 grams of pure cream. The thermie sorted out the rest - resulting in a perfect ganache that poured nicely onto the cake and set in the fridge. I also garnished with some fresh strawberries.

The cake was quite tasty, not too rich, although I did find it a little dry. I made it last night, and then because I needed to put it in the fridge, this may have caused the dryness. The recipe does suggest to serve the cake warm. Next time I make this I might try it when we can eat it still warm with some basic chocolate icing made with icing sugar and cocoa.

Happy thermomixing!