My birthday cake have originally chocolate, lots of it! In general this fluffy, big, multiple layer cakes were not my favorites. They usually had too much sugar, too sweet frosting, everything was ‘too much sugary’ and in the end I was getting the filling that the only thing I tasted was sugar sugar sugar. As if there was not too much sugar the cake wouldn’t be good enough. I couldn’t ever finish a single piece and after a while I stopped even trying them. So I tried to experiment with making less sweet cakes, trying to give them some taste, aroma and spirit than a flat sugar cake..here’s a try!

the recipe

ingredients

for the cake

• 350gr. flour
• 220gr. sugar
• 80gr. unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 1/2tbsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 clove
• 1/3 red hot cayenne pepper
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1½ tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 eggs
• 240gr. milk
• 100gr. vegetable oil
• 2tsp. vanilla extract
• 200gr. boiling water
• 40gr. liquor

for the ganache

• 500gr. dark chocolate (70% cacao)
• 500gr. heavy cream

directions

for the cake

• Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. Prepare two 22cm cake pans by buttering and lightly flouring.
• Add flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, spices, baking soda and salt into a large bowl. Whisk through and mix well.
• Add milk, vegetable oil, eggs, and vanilla to flour mixture and mix together on medium speed until well combined.
• Reduce speed and carefully add boiling water and liquor to the cake batter and then mix on high speed for 1′.
• Seperate cake batter evenly between the two prepared cake pans. Bake for 35′, the cakes in the end ill be a little bit moisty.
• Remove from the oven, cool for 10′ and then remove from the pan and let them cool completely.

for the ganache

• Break the chocolate in small pieces.
• Warm up the cream and pure it to the chocolate. Mix until you get a smooth ganache. If there are some chocolate pieces still left, then you can just warm the ganache gently above steam coming from boiling water (kind of a ‘bain-marie’ but the ganache bowl shouldn’t touch the water).
• Let the ganache cool down on room temperature for 25′-30′, it need to be firm.

coming together..

• Place one of the cakes in a big plate and add 1/3 of the ganache. Lay it smoothly so that it is evenly spread in all cake surface.
• Add on top the other cake. Put the rest of the ganache on top, lay it as well making sure that you cover also the sides of your cake. Using a knife make some ‘waves’ with the ganache.
• Keep it on rom temperature for at least 30′ before serve.

Enjoy!

Tips!

Instead of the spices and liquor you can add a small cup of some cold espresso, but that’s another recipe…