This is a deep, dark chocolate cake glazed with bittersweet chocolate ganache, piped with raspberry whipped cream frosting, and sprinkled with chopped chocolate-covered espresso beans rolled in edible gold dust. It’s a decadent, uber-chocolate cake that is both bittersweet and luxurious.

Chocolate Cake:
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup unbleached all purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup organic sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 cup of strong brewed black coffee
4 oz bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1/4 cup soy creamer (what I had on hand), but milk or buttermilk would be fine
6 oz butter
1 tablespoon instant espresso powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs

For the Chocolate Ganache:
10 oz bittersweet chocolate
12 oz heavy cream
1 tablespoon butter

For the Whipped Cream Topping (optional):
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 ounces pureed raspberries
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 gram gelatin powder
red gel food coloring (optional)

For decorative topping:
Chocolate covered espresso beans, chopped, rolled in
Edible gold powder (available at nycake.com or other online baking supply store)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter and line a 9″x13″ pan with parchment paper. Melt butter and chopped chocolate into hot brewed coffee. Add soy creamer or milk, vanilla extract and espresso powder and mix. Set aside. Sift together rest of dry ingredients and place in mixing bowl. Add slightly beaten eggs and wet ingredients, and mix all until combined.

Pour into baking pan and bake for 20-25 minutes until toothpick/cake tester just comes out clean. Do not overbake! Let cool on wire rack. After 10 minutes, remove from pan and let cool completely on wire rack. Once cool, cut out six large circles with six small circles within to resemble “donut holes”. I used a 3 1/2″ circle cutter for the outer circle and a 3/4″ cutter for the inner one.

Prepare the ganache. Chop the bittersweet chocolate finely and place in bowl. Heat heavy cream until boiling and immediately pour over chopped chocolate. Let sit for a minute, then stir until ganache is combined. Add butter and stir. Pour ganache over “donuts” with a spoon or ladle and coax it over the sides. I coated them twice for a smoother finish. Let cool and firm up in the refrigerator.

In the meantime, prepare raspberry whipped cream. It’s easy to make your own raspberry puree for the whipped cream. Bring frozen raspberries and sugar to a boil. The raspberries will liquefy. Force through a strainer with the back of a spoon. Dissolve gelatin into the puree and let sit for a few minutes. The gelatin will make the whipped cream much more stable to work with. I then heated it in the microwave for a few seconds and let cool. Whip heavy cream just until soft peaks form. Add the cooled raspberry puree into heavy cream and whip until firm. I added a drop of gel food coloring to boost the color.

Once the ganache firmed, I piped the raspberry whipped cream in a decorative pattern onto ganache-glazed donut cake. Since Valentine’s Day is coming up, I piped a pattern resembling hearts.

For a luxurious look, I chopped chocolate covered espresso beans, rolled them into edible gold dust, and sprinkled them over the whipped cream. A tiny bit of this dust goes a long way.

For a less frilly “girly” cake, I omitted the pink frosting and came up with the following. I was really pleased with the effect of the gold-dusted espresso beans; it was kind of like *bling* for my donut.

This recipe made six donut cakes, with plenty of cake scraps to snack on. I actually heated the cake scraps in the microwave the next day, and it was absolutely tender and delicious warmed. It tasted somewhat like a lava cake (without the oozing part).

My husband Bob and I made our second winter trip in a row to Paris over the holidays. This trip inevitably turned into a feeding frenzy of French food. Our first stop was Pierre Herme’s store at St. Germain des Pres. I was kicking myself for having missed it during our last trip, so we were eager to make our first visit. Also, this past year, I had obtained a copy of his book Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme, specifically because I had heard there was a recipe for macarons in there (more on that later). Anyway, there was a bit of a line, which gave me an opportunity to photograph and salivate over the the artfully presented desserts.

The longer log cakes pictured above are the modern French-style buche de noel. This style is more popular in Paris than the rolled jaconde with buttercream that I made over Christmas (the rolled version is apparently a more old-fashioned version) and requires a special trough-shaped mold which I was very tempted to buy.

The beautiful shot glass filled with fruits and creams and decorated with a violet was called an “emotion exotic” and was composed of pistachio creme brulee, pineapple seasoned with lime and coriander, coconut, and tapioca. mmm…

In the background of the picture above, you can see some of Pierre Herme’s macarons, the cookies adored by Parisians. The store had some rather exotic macaron flavors as balsamic vinegar and truffle.

We had to save some room for Sadaharu Aoki, pictured below. It was a favorite from our last visit, and just a few blocks away from Pierre’s boutique.

The “bambou” green tea cake was as delicious as ever, and we sampled a few different flavors, as well, including black forest and raspberry (no, not all on the same day).

We also went to Dalloyau for this amazing fruit pastry. Just look at all those layers! It looks like the cross-section of some geological formation. I don’t know exactly what was in it, but it was tart and delectable.

And last, but not least, was Laduree…To give you an idea of the popularity of Laduree’s macarons in Paris, we were able to get into Versailles and the Louvre faster than we were able to place an order for macarons. The line went out the door. Of course, we probably went there during a peak time of day at a peak time of year. The store clerks would not allow me to photograph inside, but I managed to get a few pics from the store window. There were some new flavor offerings, such as “rouge diva” (with chocolate, red fruits and spices) and gingerbread, and praline, in addition to the classics such as caramel with sea salt, pistachio, mocha, and so on.

Pictured below are the pastries called “les religieuses” (pink) and “les Saint Honore” made from profiterole-esque choux pastry. We didn’t get to sample those, as our stomachs could only handle so much sugar, so we happily feasted with our eyes.

This trip has inspired me to try making macarons, and Bob fortuitously came across a cookbook in Paris entirely about macarons! It is also entirely in French and suddenly I was thankful I had taken so many years of French in high school into college – to be able to read a darn French cookbook.

This recipe was based on Williams Sonoma’s pumpkin cake recipe. This is a spicy cake with crystallized ginger and walnuts. I would highly recommend this recipe if you are a fan of pumpkin and ginger. It is absolutely delicious. The recipe was intended for their pumpkin cake molds, which I actually own, but I decided to bake it in a different mold for Christmas. I thought I could create a wreath using a leaf piping tip, but I wasn’t pleased with the lack of dimensionality. Instead, I decided to use the same leaf tip to create a ruffled effect which I piped all around the top. The cream cheese frosting is excellent, as well!

The Buche de Noel, or Yule Log cake, is a traditional French cake served at Christmas time. This was my second year and second attempt at this grand holiday cake. Last year, I used a recipe from Nick Malgieri’s accessible book, Perfect Cakes. You can also find the recipe here. While I was pleased with the results, I admittedly let the genoise bake a bit too long and lost some moisture.

This time I used a recipe from The Art of the Cake, from Bruce Healy/Paul Bucat. Their Buche de Noel Cafe recipe uses a joconde rather than genoise recipe. The joconde utilizes almond flour (ground almonds) and egg whites (in addition to whole eggs) to create a thin, flexible sponge cake that facilitates rolling. After the joconde baked and cooled, I brushed it with syrup to further moisten the cake. The recipe called for a mixture of brewed espresso and heavy syrup. I improvised and used espresso powder dissolved in frangelico and agave instead of heavy syrup – this syrup turned out rather well and I didn’t have to boil anything.

I spread a thin layer of mocha buttercream over the entire sheet, then rolled the cake into the long log shown above. Note that I doubled the recipe and made two cakes, one for the main cake and the other for dissecting at angles into three “branches”. I really liked that the thinness of the sheet cake created allowed more rolls and a better “tree ring” effect. You can see a better depiction of the cross-section in the branch closest the bottom of the photo.

I decided to use basket weave tip instead of the star tip the book used, which would have created more texture and deeper grooves, but I wanted a thin layer of frosting. The basket weave tip created noticeable seams between rows, which I mitigated by running the tip over the seams at intervals with the same tip. This created a very organic bark-like texture with finer grooves which seemed to better suit this narrow cake. Here is a close-up:

The mushrooms and holly leaves and berries were sculpted from marzipan, but they are also traditionally made of meringues. I’m not sure if I will attempt to make them so realistic-looking next time, as I felt like a broken record at my party explaining that no, they were not real mushrooms. The entire cake was dusted lightly with cocoa powder and confectioner’s sugar to resemble snow…

Happy Holidays!!

This weekend, my husband and I attended the 10th Annual Chocolate Show in New York City. Over sixty chocolate vendors offered samples of their selections, as well as items for sale. I had every good intention of being very discriminating and consuming only the most appealing chocolates. But those plans went awry quickly the minute we stepped into the highly caffeinated and charged atmosphere and what ensued was a veritable feeding frenzy of chocolate.

Perhaps the most frenzied and visited booth was that of Mary’s, hailing from Tokyo. Their green tea, black sesame and caramel coffee truffle samples flew off their bento box displays the minute they were replenished. To the side, you could observe the artisans carefully hand piping exquisite designs onto individual chocolate squares. Mary’s offers unusual Eastern inspired flavors such as wasabi, sake, and purple sweet potato chocolates.

John and Kira’s was recently featured on the Martha Stewart show for their adorable “pumpkins” of whisky clove ganache-filled figs coated in orange-colored white chocolate. When I saw the pumpkins on TV, I thought the concept was quite cute and unique in itself, but the taste actually surpassed my expectations. Though I only sampled a slice, the ganache was velvety smooth and the taste was not too figgy, but sophisticated.

My husband had purchased chocolates for me from Romanico’s in Miami before, so we really looked forward to visiting their booth. Delicious as ever, they offer flavors such as guava and cream cheese, creamy coconut, and white pistachio.

Although I didn’t sample their chocolates (it was towards the end of the show and I really couldn’t take another bite), Cosmic Chocolate had a very hip and visually appealing display with cocktail inspired flavor pairings of limoncello ginger, champagne peach, and cointreau caramel.

After all the chocolate consumption, we were relieved to be able to watch some culinary demonstrations from some top chocolate/pastry chefs. We observed two demos, Chef Alessandra Altieri from Payard demonstrated a caramelized hazelnut tart with chocolate chantilly cream. The audience received copies of the recipes, as well as mini-samples of the final version! The shell and caramelized nuts were a crunchy contrast to the cream and the combination just sang in my mouth.

Later on, we watched a demo by renowned Mr. Chocolate, Chef Jacques Torres. He charmed the crowds with an inaccessible but entertaining demo of a seasonal life-size chocolate turkey in a white chocolate crate with white chocolate hay and marshmallow eggs. Pictured below is Jacques piping the marshmallow into egg molds, as well as the final product.

The highlight of the show for me was having my photo taken with Jacques Torres himself!

The infamous chocolate fashion show was held on Thursday, November 8, but the fashion collection was still on display. Pictured below are some of this year’s creations.

more chocolate fashion…

By the end of the show, I could barely even look at photos of chocolate in my brochure, a sure sign it was time to go. Good thing the show comes to New York once a year.

this recipe for golden cake with chocolate sour cream frosting at epicurious.com really caught my eye. i loved the chocolate brown and pink color combination (ahem…see banner above), and the side decorated with stripes and dots was a really fun look.

the recipe utilizes sour cream in both cake and frosting, but i decided to use buttermilk in the cake instead. both cake and frosting were still very tangy. i also spread some raspberry jam in the middle layer, and used rose-colored buttercream for the pink decorations and flowers on top. for various reasons, i used two 10″ cake pans instead of the 9″ pans called for in the epicurious recipe. the 9″ would have created a taller cake with a smaller diameter.

the chocolate frosting consisted of finely chopped and melted milk and bittersweet chocolate, sour cream and vanilla. it was very simple to make (the most labor intensive part was chopping all the chocolate) and spread and piped like a dream.

This is a chocolate cake with peanut butter mousse, topped with milk chocolate “ganache”, chocolate shavings, and a chocolate covered espresso bean, and dusted ever so lightly with edible gold dust.

I made mini cakes using my favorite chocolate cake batter. These were taken out of their cups and sliced into thirds. I then filled the layers with peanut butter mousse. The “ganache” was somewhat improvisational, as I only had milk chocolate on hand (though I would have preferred using semi or bittersweet). The high ratio of heavy cream to chocolate resulted in the drippy consistency which I embraced by letting it run over the sides. I topped the cakes with a chocolate covered espresso bean, chocolate shavings and gold dust.

I took on the challenge of creating my first wedding cake this past week for recently married friends. The design was loosely based on bride’s blue and purple lengha, a traditional Indian dress. Each of the three tiers had four layers of chocolate cake with raspberry jam, and were filled and frosted with grand marnier buttercream throughout.

I wanted to apply some gold decoration to the sides and edges and researched several options, but was finally advised by a person at NY Cake to apply edible gold paint. It comes as a dust that you mix with alcohol or lemon extract. I thought I’d give it a shot and was thrilled with the results!

The whole process was a bit nerve wracking (especially the transporting in and out of my rather narrow refrigerator and to the actual event!), but enjoyable. It was rewarding to see the delight in the newlywed’s faces, to watch people going up for second and third helpings, and to receive compliments such as “Janet’s cakes just make you happy…”

Some people at my office celebrated a party recently with Buttercup Bake Shop cupcakes. I observed a woman savoring one of their red velvet cupcakes. I was curious about the concept of red velvet cake, so I set off to create a birthday cake to explore (and possibly demystify) the intrigue.

I searched my baking books and was dismayed to find few, if any, recipes for this cake. Even the Cake Bible produced no results. Was this a conspiracy? So I did an internet search and came up with three recipes from epicurious.com, Joy of Baking, and Cakeman Raven’s cake via Food Network. Cakeman Raven’s 1 1/2 cups of oil seemed a bit much, so I leaned towards the other two recipes which called for butter. However, I did not want to eliminate the oil entirely as it would add moisture, so I added a token 2 tablespoons. I tried to use as little red food coloring as possible, but basically ended up using about the entire 2 tablespoons generally called for this cake. The resulting cake was extremely red so I felt I should have added less in retrospect.

very red cake!

Alas, I concluded that the lure of the red velvet cake was largely psychological. The mere mention of red velvet cake prompts “oohs” and guilty smiles. The color red is indeed seductive, dramatic and has a stimulating effect, but adds little intrinsic flavor value. I figured this is the reason why it was so difficult to find in my recipe books. Overall, though, it was a good cake, turned out extremely moist and was well-received.

this was a chocolate cake with mocha frosting and filling. i piped a shell border and placed chocolate covered espresso bean on alternate shells. i spread a layer of apricot jam in the middle so the roses on top, made from dried apricots, allude to the apricot preserves within. the roses were made by splitting a dried apricot in half (they should have be en pre-split during the pitting process), and rolling each half in parchment paper with a rolling pin to thin it out. once the “petals” are flattened, wrap and form several into a rose. the leaves are hand-formed from modeling chocolate.