This is a technique I've been waiting to try from atleast 13-14 years now and today was that day! It's a very very simple technique and I'm up for these things anytime! You would have seen that in my Checkerboard Cake & Honeycomb Cake . Call me crazy but I love standing near the cake analyzing how to slice it so that I can get the design I have in mind. You will find me walking around the cake, bending down to get it to eye level, standing up scratching my head...as if it's an experiment. Oh yes! all these are my little experiments :)
I got out of the store with a vision in my mind...If I ever open up a Cake shop, this is how it would be. Really, it was my wonderland. I wanted to go there this time when we went to Goa but we were so hard pressed for time with all the wedding preparations, rehearsals and above all, meeting all my family on Amma's side. We all stayed at the Panjim Inn and had a gala time. We are quite large with 75 members and still counting so you can imagine what fun it would have been to get together and stay under the same roof. I pity the neighbours! ;-)
The beautiful crockery you see in the photographs are my Grandmother's .Appan came up with this brilliant idea of searching through her crockery collection to match the cake for today :-) She has this amazing collection of the best crockery possible and this is just 1/5th of it. I inherited her craze for crockery and cooking :-) The one you see above is handpainted and Made in England and they were bought by her in late 60's early 70's.There are plenty more in her collection and some of them are so exquisite that we can never find such pieces now.I'm sure she would have been gleaming if she was alive to see this here. I bet she is the one who is pushing me into all these things that lead me to winning the title,'Pachakarani '. Even Amma believes the same :)
COFFEE - CHOCOLATE TRIANGLE CAKE
You will need:
1 large Coffee sponge cake (Recipe source -Amma)
1 large portion of Chocolate Ganache
Ingredients:
For the Coffee sponge cake:
6 large eggs
1 cup granulated white sugar
3/4 cup all purpose flour/maida
2 tbsp cornstarch/cornflour
1 tsp instant coffee powder
Method:
Pre-heat the oven to 180C .
In a large mixing bowl, beat together the eggs and sugar on high for 12 minutes resulting in a very thick mousse like batter. Sift the dry ingredients over it and fold it in.
Pour the batter into a prepared rectangular cake tin and bake for 30-35 mins or till the skewer inserted comes out clean. Let it cool in the tin for 10 minutes and then flip it over onto a cooling rack and cool completely.
Once cooled, cut the cake into half horizontally and then into 3 which will give you 6 small rectangular pieces of cake.
Ingredients
For the Chocolate Ganache:
250 ml fresh cream/heavy whipping cream
250 g dark chocolate
Method:
Chop the chocolate into equal sized pieces and reserve them in a heatproof bowl.
Bring the cream to a boil and then pour it over the chocolate pieces. Let stand for 3-4 mins.
Stir till you get a nice chocolate-y cream. You can chill it for 15-20 mins to get a thicker consistency which is what I prefer.
Verdict: This cake was superb! I know it's just a plain coffee sponge and a good ganache, but it was really really good. That's because the cake layers were super thin and every layer was sandwiched with a thick layer of ganache which resulted in the melt-in-your-mouth texture. I will not recommend soaking the layers for this kind of a cake because it will be super messy to cut to form a triangle. Therefore use a cake which is not dry.
We loved it! Appan said,'This cake is awesome!How did you make it so good?'. Amma asked for a second piece and knowing the cake-hater that she is, it sure must have been good. Ritchie, the birthday boy, a man of very few words stood there and gobbled up 2 pieces in a row. I had my share of this cake after the photo session was over and Ritchie found me smiling and he asked me why :-) The entire cake was cut and devoured in less than 20 mins!
I'm pleased with the photographs here because none of them were edited! :-)
