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BIANZ Resources » Bakery Recipes » Cakes & Muffins » Rich dark chocolate cake

Rich dark chocolate cake
Contrary to popular belief, Valentine’s Day was not one of those days purely invented by the commercial sector. One legend has it that a priest called Valentine, in the time of the Roman Emperor Claudius, was marrying people in secret. Valentine was caught and then executed, with his final note to his lover being signed “From your Valentine”.

My Valentine

250g Butter
500g Brown Sugar (you can use white sugar).
200g Eggs (fresh eggs are best).
2g Salt
4g Baking Soda
2g Baking powder
340g Standard white Flour.
100g Cocoa Powder
430mls Warm water
60g Good quality dark chocolate
5g Vanilla essence

Ganache for covering
120mls Fresh cream
20g Butter
240g dark chocolate (chopped into small pieces)
20g Glucose if required

To make chocolate cake

  1. Melt chocolate by double boiler or microwave
  2. Weigh water and cocoa together and whisk until there are no lumps. Set  aside.
  3. Soften butter. Cream butter and sugar until light.
  4. Warm eggs, add eggs slowly.
  5. Weigh and sieve dry ingredients together.
  6. Add vanilla essence to batter.
  7. Add half the dry ingredients to batter, and mix in slowly.
  8. Add half the cocoa powder and water mix, and mix in slowly.
  9. Repeat dry ingredients.
  10. Repeat cocoa water mixture.
  11. Finally mix through melted chocolate and mix on 1st speed until smooth, scrape down by hand until all is combined.
  12. Line tins with greaseproof paper, fill and bake at 170ºC until baked. Check centre of cake with skewer for bake and leave to cool.

To make ganache

  1. Place cream, glucose, butter in saucepan and bring to boil.
  2. Remove from heat immediately and add the chopped chocolate, stirring constantly until smooth and silky. Leave to cool.
  3. Will be ready to pour when temperature is approximately 37ºC.

pour

To put cake together

  1. You can put a thin layer of ganache in between cake but this cake is rich enough to not need a filling.
  2. Mask the cake in a thin layer of chocolate butter cream or ganache if you require a very smooth finish, or you can apply an extra coating of ganache to achieve this finish.
  3. When ganache is at correct temperature of 37ºC and consistency (smooth and still runny), pour over cake and smooth off with a pallet knife, totally covering cake.
  4. Leave to set, decorate as per photo, or as you require.
  5. Note: for the marzipan roses and hearts I have used Bakels ready-to-use icing (RTU), an excellent product for this type of work.
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