Utterly Delicious Chocolate Cake

I stole that description from Martha - she's always saying use superlatives to describe your food and your guests WILL BELIEVE that it is utterly delicious! In this case, the superlatives are not needed, as this great hunk of chocolate bliss stood on its own. Rich chocolate cake supported by its favorite player, velvety ganache. mmmmm. The above picture shows all that was left after my grandmother's 77th birthday celebration.

I truly couldn't believe how well this cake turned out. I'm not a great cake maker, as something always happens in the oven to make my cake come out lopsided or just baked WRONG and then no amount of frosting can cover it up. This time was no exception. I had thought I had 1 9" cake pan at home, so I purchased a 2nd, only to come home and find that I had 1 8" cake pan at home. sigh...so I was left to make them in my sorry silicone cake pan bakeware, which requires much babysitting and moving around of pans. Still, they didn't come out completely horrible, and after a few shave-downs to make them more even and an overnight visit in the fridge and a quick chill in the freezer, they weren't half bad to work with. From now on I'm taking the advice of professional cake makers and making my cakes ahead and chilling them.

The star of the cake I think truly was the ganache. I'd made ganache before to churn out bonbons, but never as a frosting. I had always assumed it was too liquidy to be a frosting, but chilling and letting it set up really gives it the consistency of frosting. I don't know if I will ever really go back to using buttercream, as it's such a pain to make and work with and this...well it was utterly delicious!

Awesome Chocolate Cake

2 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon baking soda
3 cups granulated sugar
5 eggs, room temp
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups buttermilk, room temp
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups strong coffee

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour sides and bottoms of pans. Set pans aside.

In large bowl of mixer, stir together the flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder and soda. Stir in the sugar.

In small bowl, combine the eggs and vanilla extract. Mix into the dry ingredients. Stir in the buttermilk, melted butter and coffee. Divide batter evenly among pans.

Bake at 350 for around 50 minutes. Transfer to wire cooling rack.

I can never find enough to make with buttermilk so I never have it on hand. In this case I subbed milk with some vinegar added. I couldn't tell you the measurements, but just make sure the mixture equals 1 1/2 cups. I also didn't use strong coffee, but instead chose to follow the directions on the back of my instant espresso powder for making 1 1/2 cups or 12 ounces of espresso.

Easy Foolproof Ganache

18 ozs semisweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoon liquor or flavoring (optional)

Heat cream until nearly boiling. Pour over chocolate chips, cover and let sit 10 minutes. Whisk chocolate and cream (and flavor if using) until well combined; dark, smooth and glossy.

Let sit at room temp until cooled. To thicken, beat with hand mixer for a few minutes. Also thickens over time as it sits.

Refrigerate in airtight container for up to a week. To restore to spreading or glazing consistency, heat and stir over double boiler for a few minutes until softened.

I let my ganache sit out and in the fridge for probably 30 minutes, then spread it between the layers and on top. I then put the whole frosted cake in the fridge until it was time to transport. This helped a lot to firm it up for its short, albeit warm, transport to the party.

I omitted the liquor and flavoring as I didn't want to screw it up. In the future I would probably experiment with Kahlua or Grand Marnier, or even citrus extract. I would probably match it in the cake as well.