Ganache Panache!

Ah, chocolate ganache. Smooth, rich, delicious, and in this cake recipe, the ganache came in two forms. I decided to bake a chocolate mint devil's food cake for a dear friend's birthday. This was only the second homemade cake from scratch I have ever attempted. The cake batter was easy - and I learned that devil's food really just means that cocoa and sour cream are added to cake flour and standard wet cake ingredients. The "devilish" part comes from how good it tastes - people used to believe that this chocolate cake was so good, it could have only come from el diablo himself.

The cake baked beautifully, but cooling is the part I hate. It was a night where the temperature was in the teens, yet I still had the windows open and the fan going so I could cool my cake to start the frosting process. Meanwhile, I also began to combine my heavy cream and 2 POUNDS of chocolate to create the ganache. I added pure peppermint extract for that nice, minty flavor.

Above was the silky ganache that was produced after toiling over the stovetop until everything melted together. On the left here is the product that was produced after whipping the ganache in my Kitchen Aid for nearly ten minutes (stiff peaks stage). This layer was meant to be in between the two cakes, then frosted on top, before the final layer of the liquid ganache was poured.





For the most part, the cake and ganache got along. However, because of my hastiness in the cooling process, I neglected to realize that the cake may be cool to the touch, but certainly not through and through. When I went to cut the cake with a serrated blade to even the two layers out, I had some hot, angry innards to deal with. Once I began to assemble the cake, the internal temperature of the cake caused a great deal of the ganache to melt, putting me on damage control. I frosted the top layer with whippy ganache, then poured over the liquid ganache. This worked surprisingly well.

While Martha Stewart recommended finishing off the cake with chocolate-covered mint leaves, I decided to use crushed candy cane bits. The mint was looking a bit limp at the supermarket, and figuring that this was for a fourteen-year old, that the candy cane pieces would be a fun touch. This was the finished product. I now understand why Martha recommends using cardboard rounds because Biscuit and I had a heck of a time trying to transport the cake from the cooking rack to the box. The thing nearly split, putting me once again on damage control, using extra ganache to repair a few cracks here and there. Luckily this recipe yielded enough ganache to cover an acre of land, so there was plenty to salvage the cake.

I stored the whippy ganache, thinking I could do something creative with it later on. I did try to use it in the thumbprint cookies I did next, but it was clear that thumbprint cookies are really meant to have cream cheese filling. I did manage to recycle the cake scraps from the leveling incident, add to them the remaining ganache and make Biscuit a little mini-cake of his own. It was certainly not pretty to look at, but we got to sample what the cake would taste like. To me that is the tragedy of cakes - when you bake them and give them to someone, you never fully know how they turn out (unless you stalk them and make them share). At least I was able to take elements of the cake, put them together, and have Biscuit act at my guinea pig. He said he loved the chocolate peppermint flavor and he even liked the texture of the ganache. A big surprise - considering his texture issues.

The only sad part about this story is that I came to find out, only after the fact, that indeed, the cake recipient did not like chocolate. I hope, at least, her family or someone enjoyed the efforts.