11 Years old today with a Chocolate Awesomeness Cake

I know its been a while since I updated this blog with any recipes so I suppose it's kind of fitting that this latest update is about my son's 11th Birthday! It was kinda fortunate that his birthday fell on a Public Holiday today so we were able to stay at home with him and also invited the family over for a Birthday Lunch. My parents were away in Melbourne while my brother and his daughters were in Gold Coast so that meant slightly fewer people. Still, there were about 15 odd people invited!

As per the tradition in this household, we woke my son up after hiding his presents under the bed. My little princess had 'camped' on the floor in his room the previous night too!



For his birthday this year, he got a replica Chelsea jersey and also a table football game - Subbuteo - something that Dads had always wanted when he was young as well! It didnt take long for both the kids to test out the game.


The Lovely Wife, together with help from her Mom, did their magic and whipped up the lunch spread. For lunch there was Stewed Pork (Tau Yew Bak) with Man Tau buns;



Fried Prawns, Chicken Curry,




Yoghurt Curry (Mohr Curry) Mixed Vegetables,




Vegetable Accar (Pickles) and Onion Rice.



Quite a fancy little spread if you ask me! My contribution as usual was dessert and the Birthday Cake.

My son had asked for a different cake, something that would be really nice but also chocolatey. He especially liked the Chocolate Truffle Torte that I had made for Christmas last year so I decided to adapt that recipe and make something completely new.

Actually, for this cake, I adapted various different recipes and components that I had made before to assemble this cake. I used the tried and tested Cake Boss Sponge recipe that I have grown to love as the base. I modified my Tiramisu soaking syrup to make it less coffee flavoured. I used the Praline Feulletine component of the Le Kit Kat cake inspired by Michel Richard and adapted the Truffle from the Chocolate Truffle Torte to assemble this cake.

Boozy Cheesy Cherry Cake

Many weeks ago - in January - one of our good friends, Elison, celebrated her birthday and we invited her over for dinner together with another good friend, Lynn. I've mentioned before that Eli is a great cook who also has very high standards so I'm always a bit nervous when baking a cake for her - especially her birthday cake!

The Lovely Wife suggested that I do something different instead of always going down the route of chocolate. I considered making her my Chocolate Trifle that she adores but then decided to try and dazzle her with something new.

Chocolate Sauce Frozen Cake another delight from Aunty Julie

Some time ago, I explained the cooking influences in my life - one of which is my Aunty Julie. When we were young, she would treat us to these magnificent creations that left such an impression that I still salivate whenever I think of them. She would always be more than happy to share her recipes as well and this recipe comes from her.

This dessert is a real delight to eat. Cake, combined with a mousse-like Chocolate sauce that is frozen. It turns out a little like a mix between an ice cream cake and a self saucing pudding. The frozen cake doesnt really get hard as it is a sponge cake and thaws in a matter of minutes.


The original recipe calls for one thick layer of sponge cake covered with the sauce but since I made two cake layers, I decided to layer this cake too. I decorated the cake with mandarin slices that gave it a nice citrus flavour too.

Ingredients
1 Sponge cake
6 oz castor sugar
6 oz butter
300ml milk
1.5oz cocoa
3 egg yolks
3 egg whites
Rum

Method
Cream butter and sugar till light. Set aside. Boil milk and cocoa and whisk till smooth. Add in egg yolks being careful not to let the yolks curdle. Mix into the butter mixture. Whisk egg white with a pinch of salt till stiff. Add in some rum. Pour over a sponge cake and freeze.

Unfortunately this cake didn't photograph very well - or maybe its just my photography skills that are lacking. Nonetheless, it is a delightul dessert that doesnt take long to whip up but the oohs and aahs that accompany the eating of this dessert prove what a winner it is.

Black Forest Trifle - 2 versions

I'm sure i've mentioned that The Lovely Wife absolutely adores Trifle. In fact, she love Trifle so much that I once made her a Trifle Cake for her birthday. I usually like to make a more fancy dessert when we have guests over for dinner although I am slowly learning that there are in fact, quite a large number of people that actually like Trifle quite a lot! Another reason, that drives The Lovely Wife crazy is that I always like to try something new - to boost my repertoire and also to blog about it! So when we recently had a couple of friends over who like Trifle, I decided to try something new by making a Chocolate Trifle!





I actually had two occasions to make this Chocolate Trifle and I made two different versions. Both were made with layers of sponge, jam, black cherried, chocolate custard and cream. The first chocolate custard was loosely based on a recipe from a book The Lovely Wife got me called Chocolate Box.

I made the cake using the Perfect Party Cake Recipe from Dory Greenspan, then I sandwhiched the cake with Blackberry Jam, covered the whole lot in Black cherries and then covered that with chocolate custard and cream. Very, very delicious.



The second time, I followed the same idea except I made a different chocolate custard. This recipe was based on the Chocolate Eclairs Pastry Cream from another previous Daring Bakers challenge. The cake however didnt turn out as springy and spongy and that was because I didn't cream the butter and sugar quite as much as I should have. The cake was still lovely except that it was extra rich and buttery rather than soft, white and light like it should have been. The pastry cream was much nicer though. I also covered the trifle with almonds the second time around.


Both versions went down very well with the guests we have over. The second version was served for dessert at home after going out for lunch with Lynn and another friend, Ms Kong Piang, back in February and who also posted about it on her blog.

I think this Chocolate Trifle has definitely become a favourite dessert of mine to serve and more importantly to enjoy!



Chocolate Custard recipe from Chocolate Box
6 egg yolks
55g casetr sugar
1 Tbsp corn flour
500ml milk
55g dark chocolate

Place egg yolks and sugar in a bowl and whisk until thick and pale. Stir in the cornflour. Put milk in a saucepan and heat until almost boiling. Pour onto the yolk mixture, stirring all the while. Return to the heat and bring to boiling, stirring constantly until it thickens. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly. Add in the chocolate and whisk till it is all melted and blended into the custard.

Double Chocolate Mousse Cake

This cake was made way back in August 2008 when my good friend Naomi visited for lunch. This was the dessert that I served that day and in all honesty, I have never seen a cake disappear so fast! Aside from my family, there were 4 other adults so in total that made 6 adults and 2 kids. The cake was fairly large and also rather rich and I really thought there would be plenty left over - especially since The Lovely Wife insists that I serve small slices - so people can take second serves if they like and not be forced to stuff their faces with too much cake, and end up not enjoying it. I can see some logic in her idea but to me, theres nothing wrong with a large slice of cake!!




The plan with this cake actually turned a little awry. Nonetheless, it still turned out pretty good.



This is what I did.

I made my sponge cake recipe from the Australian Women's Weekly New Cookbook (1978)which is the same recipe used for theOrange Choc Sponge Cake and also the Reverse Black Forest Cake. This sponge cake is very, very light and is great with mousse. I split the cake into four layers and then I then made two ganache 'mousses' - one with milk chocolate and the other with dark chocolate. This was done by mixing equal parts chocolate and cream and then whipping the mixture up till it became thick.

This is where the plan went awry. I wanted to cover the whole cake with a dark choc ganache but realised I had very little dark chocolate left over. So what I did was to mix a little cream with chocolate, some icing sugar and cocoa as well as some butter and I got this buttercream-ish sort of topping.
So.. one layer of sponge cake, brushed with some sugar syrup, then a layer of dark chocolate 'mousse', another layer of sponge, followed by the milk chocolate 'mousse' yet another layer of cake topped with dark choc 'mousse' and the final layer of cake on top. I then spread the icing over the cake and placed it in the fridge.



The cake cut really well although it was a little hard to keep the slices standing up since the sponge was so light. What I did was to serve the cake on its side. Not as nice as an upright slice, but as long as the cake tasted good - right?



See? The cake was finished in one sitting. I've never had a cake that disappeared so fast. Maybe the guests were really hungry or they needed a lot of dessert to douse the fire from my Fiery Chicken Curry or maybe, just maybe, this cake was a real winner!