A few months ago, gripped by baking fever, I purchased Mary Berry's Baking Bible. I quickly decided to embark upon a mission to bake everything in the book, and turn myself from an occasional baker into a bit of an expert. My Grandad Ern was a Master Baker by trade; the man responsible for introducing Danish Pastries to England in fact, and I wish it had occurred to me to spend more time learning from him, rather than simply enjoying the fruits of his effortless labours. This project is almost a way of making amends for that; I'd like to follow in his footsteps (if not in my career, at least as a hobby) and continue the proud heritage of baking in my family.
I credit my friend Rachel with the idea to write a blog about my baking exploits, hoping that there will be more successes than failures as I attempt all 213 of the Queen of Baking's recipes.
So as not to bore the husband with a monotonous diet of sponges, followed by weeks of biscuits, I've decided to tackle the recipes by selecting the first bake from each chapter, followed by the second recipe and so on. I'm not going to pick and choose; I'm determined to face my baking demons and learn how to do everything baking-related, even if the consequences are disastrous!
Everything will be photographed, with comment about how I found baking it, and a husband rating (to be taken with a pinch of salt as he has a very selective cake-tooth).


Sunday 12 February 2012

6. Death By Chocolate Cake

If you were going to meet your end in a chocolatey fashion, I'm sure this cake would help. The cake itself simply has cocoa powder in it; it's the icing that might cause artery cloggage! Instead of butter, sunflower oil is used and there's some golden syrup in there too. With the addition of milk, a mixture of a very wet consistency is formed, and two fairly sticky sponges emerge.After cooling, the cakes need to be sliced in half; managed with relative ease.
Picture 1 shows the icing: the product of 450g of plain chocolate and 200g of butter. It's a huge amount, designed to sandwich each half sponge together and cover the top and sides. It tasted heavenly (we had to lick the pallet knife when I'd finished icing, of course), but you'd not want much of it in one sitting!My first attempt at icing a whole cake was a bit cack-handed to say the least, but I sort of found a technique and don't think I did too badly for a first attempt. I don't think I overheated the chocolate - it looked pretty shiny to me. The picture on the right shows the semi-finished product, and if I make this cake again I think I'd leave it at that. Just serve it with cream and some raspberries or boozy cherries maybe.
This is the cake post-decoration. I had to coarsely grate plain and white chocolate (which Joe ended up doing for me thanks to my jitters about grating my fingers). I'm now quite eager to learn a bit more about chocolate-craft when decorating cakes; I wasn't happy with the end result, which made it look a bit of a mess really.
When sliced, the cake looked lovely. The icing had set firm, which created a nice contrast in textures between a very light sponge and quite solid chocolate. I'm pleased to have produced a cake which looked a bit professional; a step beyond the basic sponge sandwich variety. It wasn't too sickly (certainly not sweet) but you'd need to eat to your means!
Baker's verdict: a challenge; some anxiety about whether the sponges were cooked enough. Tasted lovely. I'd make this again.
Husband rating: 9 - very tasty; very nice chocolate icing.
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