Yet again, Martha Stewart's One Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes take the cake. It was a family birthday, and for special occasions I stick to tried and tested recipes, and since this was pretty much tried and tested, I again went for it.
'Someone's been in my kitchen!', cried the mumma bear. Who could it be, I wonder.
The leftovers. Stuffed. "How ruuude!"
I made two round cakes and sliced both into two (three if you count removing the dome) and got a four layered cake, layered with chocolate ganache and nougat. For the nougat I made caramel from two cups of sugar and tossed into it around a cupful of toasted almonds and walnuts. My family loves nougat, whether its with vanilla ice cream (with chocolate sauce if you are feeling particularly indulgent) or just like that, yeah, I mean just popping them into your mouth like popcorn!
Ok, here's an interesting bit. Did you realise you were looking at chocolate ganache of three different colours. Here's how that happened. After I had the cake covered in ganache, I wanted to do to feather icing, so I added some cocoa to the leftover ganache thinking it will get darker in colour, but no! it got lighter. Thinking my eyes were playing tricks, I added some more, and it got still lighter! So then I made the rings with this lighter ganache, and then made the second one with some little-old-much-darker-than-both ganache I had! Am sorry, this all is soo confusing I know!
After making the caramel and before adding the nuts to it, I made some caramel sticks with which I crowned the cake, though I agree it does look like a crown of thorns! Now I feel it really wasn't required and would have looked much prettier on a cake covered with whipped cream. (Try sponge cake with whipped cream and nougat if you havent yet!) For the layers I used the finer nougat and used the bigger pieces to cover the sides. And as always I was behind time so couldn't really wait for the ganache to cool down completely and thicken, therefore the nougat didn't stick properly, creating a ring of yummy debri around the cake!
'Someone's been in my kitchen!', cried the mumma bear. Who could it be, I wonder.
The leftovers. Stuffed. "How ruuude!"
Note: The propotions given on the site are somewhat different from those of the book, and I used the book.
Wondering what happened to the domes? Three days later they made a very good two layer cake by themselves, covered and sandwiched with leftover ganache and nougat.