Saturday, April 5, 2014

Ganache is my crumb coat, and other tales of chocolate

In a conversation on Facebook, I joked with Amanda at I am Baker that I'd make a rose cake if she'd bake bunny bread.

I was only half-serious, because I'd been wanting to make a rose cake for a while. And she has video. How could I go wrong? 

Well, we're talking about me, so it could go horribly wrong, with me covered in frosting and the cake in crumbs but ... she has video.

I figured it was worth a try.

If you're not familiar with Amanda's site, you should go check it out. And while you're at it, go gawk at her cookbook, Surprise-Inside Cakes.

I decided to make a chocolate rose cake, because I like chocolate. And I figured that even if I messed up the decorating, I still had chocolate cake.

Sooo, I started my current favorite chocolate cake recipe. It's ridiculously good.

And then I coated the cake with a layer of ganache, because I happen to adore ganache. And then I made a batch of Amanda's chocolate buttercream, which I have to say was pretty darned good too. So far, so good.

I put a bit of a twist on the buttercream recipe, since I used a super-dark cocoa powder - you can find it at King Arthur Flour as Black Cocoa, and other sources sell it as Black Onyx cocoa. Try it, if you ever have a chance. It's really different from other cocoas.

The resulting buttercream was really really dark and the flavor was reminiscent of Oreos.

But the roses ... oh, the roses! I've look at those rose cakes at I Am Baker's blog and marveled at them. So darned pretty!

I knew the cake recipe was good, ganache is always good ... but I wondered if I could pull off the decorating. And I have to say I was quite impressed with myself.

I baked the cake in a 9-inch square pan, just for the heck of it. The cake wasn't super-tall, so the roses on the sides weren't as big as they could have been, and since that's where I started, I wasn't quite as confident as I was when I got to the top of the cake.

But still, I think this is the prettiest cake I've ever made. And it really was amazingly easy. Even for me!

What do you think?
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