Double chocolate mud & sourc ream Ganash cake with real vanilla

Double chocolate mud & Ganache cake with vanilla garnish

A friend of ours recently wanted to make a chocolate mud cake but her attempt wasn't as good as she hope for. So she came around and asked me what went wrong. After talking a while, I decided that the recipe she got was maybe not the best. I went out there to look for a better suited recipe for her in order to make the perfect chocolate mud cake possible. That is when I came upon this recipe that looked very attempting. She seriously got me already with phrase: “you meet no resistance from the thick layer of chocolate goodness” of course I had to try to make this cake. I modified my version and here is my personal version of this wonderful cake. I already have a few additional modifications in my mind, which I will make the next time when baking this cake.

Slice of cake with vanilla garnish

Ingredients

Cake

• 250 g butter
• 200 g dark chocolate
• 1 cup espresso
• 200 g caster sugar
• 175 g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder
• 2 free-range eggs
• 2 vanilla pods

modifications: I reduced the amount of sugar and coffee and I replaced the vanilla extract with the more subtle and rich flavor of the real vanilla pod

Ganache

• 15 g dark brown sugar
• 175 g unsalted butter, cubed
• 300 g good-quality dark chocolate, finely chopped
• 200 g sour cream
• Grated zest of one lemon (I wish I would have had orange zest as it complements chocolate  better IMHO)
• 2 Tbsp of my self made vanilla extract
• 1 Tbsp of dark rum

modifications: I do not add any water, I put some sour cream for creaminess (normally one would work with heavy whipping cream when making a Ganache, I added some lemon zest and of course I replaced the vanilla extract with the more subtle and rich flavor of the real vanilla pod

Instructions:

Grease a cake form and put it in the fridge so the butter can settle in the form. Preheat your oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Start making the cake batter. For this, we prepare a bain marie, in this we are going to put a heat resistant bowl in which we add the butter, chocolate, coffee and the mark of the vanilla pod, containing all the flavor rich vanilla beans, in the bain marie. Melt everything and mix it until it all is dissolved and mixed together. add the sugar and dissolve while taking the bowl of the bain marie. Add the eggs and sift the flour and the cocoa powder into the batter and mix everything together to create a beautiful batter without any lumps.

Take the cake form out of the fridge, add the cake batter and pop it in the oven. for 45 - 50 minutes. If you want to check if the cake is well baked through, you can pick a toothpick in the center of the cake. if you draw it out without any cake batter hanging on it, then the cake should be fine. We take it out of the oven, put it aside and let it cool down to room temperature. In the meantime we can make our Ganache. 

Chocolate mud cake fresh from the oven

Now prepare another bain marie. In the fireproof bowl put the brown sugar, cubed butter, the chopped dark chocolate and the grated zest of lemon. 

Ingredients of the Ganache in the bowl ready for the bain marie

Put the bowl over the bain marie until everything is molten. 

Molten chocolate Ganache

Take the molten Ganache f the bain marie and mix in the sour cream, the vanilla extract and the rum. Now the Ganache s to cool down. As for this it's advised to let the Ganache sit over night at room temperature. But we are living in a very hot place and the room temperature is too hot so the Ganache would not easily get harder and creamy for me to be able to work with. 

"When we are making a Ganache  and cooling it down in order to work with it, we are looking for the Ganache to have the consistency of Nutella cream or peanut butter." 

So I am cheating and putting the Ganache he fridge. But I need to pay attention not to leave it too long in the fridge as the Ganache ill turn hard after some time and I would not be able to work with it any more. So i check every ten minutes until the Ganachehas the right consistency.  

Cooled down Ganache with the right and creamy consistency

Now, when the Ganache as the right consistency, spread the Ganacheon top of the cooled down cake. Spread it out evenly and even it out.

Spreading the Ganache over the cake

Then pop the cake in the fridge to let the Ganache cool down. Ready is your Ganache cake. Feel free to portion and decorate according to your taste.

Piece of cake with the layers very well visible