No Gary No!

September 6 – Emily’s Chocolate Cake.

When this challenge started at the beginning of the year Emily gave me this recipe which I was really excited about. She’s made a copy of a recipe that she had from when she was a little girl which I thought was really cool. It's super cute, you can even see that she’s practiced her handwriting on it. It was finally time to cook Emily’s Chocolate Cake.

Two weeks ago, the majority of the smokers at work (and one ‘non-smoker’) decided to quit smoking together so they could help each other through the process. Some of them are doing amazingly well so, in honour of their efforts, I decided to cook a Quit Cake.

I rushed home from work and got all the cake stuff ready. Lining the tin with paper proved much more complicated that I would have ever thought, but I got it all assembled and the mixture (one of the best cake mixes I’ve ever tasted) was ready to chuck in the oven as I rushed out the door to get my waxing done. By the time I returned it smelt good but still had another 30-40 minutes left in the oven. While icing my face and cooking Bolognese for dinner I also started making the white chocolate ganache to ice the cake with. I had been told you simply heat ½ cup of cream on the stove, then add it to the 180 grams of melted chocolate and then whisk it on and off, for as long as possible.

Cam came over for dinner so while I was doing the finishing touches to the Bolognese, she was whisking my ganache.

“Um, Jo... what’s this meant to look like”

“I dunno”

“Well, it’s just turned from a nice sauce, into a curdled mess, should I stop now?”

My brilliant strategy was to just leave it and sit down for dinner. 

The cake got a bit stuck to the tin (which I broke) so some it wasn’t quite as smooth as I’d hoped, but once I put the curdled icing on top no one would be able to tell which lumps were from what! I was concerned that it might be a bit dry and overcooked, but there was no way to tell until I cut it the next day.

After Cam went home I got stuck into making the coloured icing and creating my pattern. The icing turned out really well, but I made a SERIOUS mess with the red food dye. In my wisdom, I thought I’d better take off my black work top so I wouldn’t get that dirty and just leave on my white singlet – not a good call. It’s now a white singlet with red spots.

The piping was relatively easy, lots of fun and I was pretty impressed with my skills. We don’t have a cake container, so I had to buy one this morning before work. Coles also didn’t have one so I just bought a big container (that I washed carefully so I wouldn’t ruin the stickers and will return tomorrow and continue looking for a proper cake container).

The cake was a hit at work. They were totally impressed with my skills and took photos of it and everything! I was worried it would be dry and the icing would taste gross, but I thought it was quite nice and everyone else seemed impressed... except for one colleague who loves a smoke and missed out on cake who when I showed her the picture said “oh, you’re a cunt aren’t ya?”. Charming

Tips: Be careful with the ganache, something weird happened. I also only had the cake in for about 40 minutes and it was perfect!

Music: Wolfmother