Chocolate cake and how to make a chocolate edge
Technically this is of course not a blue chocolate cake but this was our blue version of the ‘Chocolate Jewels” photoshoot where you previously saw that amazing Strawberry chocolate cake. I am just very glad that Alex does not bake me cakes like this every week or I would be in a lot more trouble then I already am (weightwise that is!)
The trick with this cake is that it has a chocolate wrap around it. Not sure if you would call it a wrap but I can’t think of any other name for that at the moment.. I always thought it would be extremely hard to do something like that and it was actually simpler then it appeared. It gets a little messy as you can see in the little video we made of the process of creating and placing the wrap but it’s not nearly as difficult as you would think it is.
The video is in Dutch but the process is pretty easy to understand if you don’t speak Dutch. You can’t really go wrong. Just be sure to be wearing something that is ok to get chocolate stained… Someone commented on the 2nd photo you see below that it looks like the cake is wrapped in paper as the chocolate is too smooth… I kind of agree with her to be honest, but what do you think? These are two cakes; in case you were wondering. The first one we had a little trouble getting the chocolate wrapped around nicely and the chocolate had a lot of holes in it plus as you can see it is missing the end part. The one below here looked like this without any editing except for removing two tiny holes (which are still visible in the 3rd picture). Whatever the case; these are real cakes and real chocolate…
Blue chocolate cake
Ingredients
- 300 g dark chocolate at least 70% chocolate content
- 4 tablespoons strong coffee
- 250 g butter unsalted
- 225 g cane sugar
- 8 eggs split
- 50 g all purpose flour
- 25 g cocao powder
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 250 g ground almonds
- 100 g macaroons ground bitterkoekjes in dutch
- 500 g blue berries and blackberries
- Chocolate ganache
- 3 dl double cream or whipping cream
- 300 g dark chocolate
- Chocolate wrap
- 200 g dark chocolate
- Heat the oven to 180 C. Grease two baking tins with a diameter of 20 cm (and preferably with high edges).
- Melt the chocolate with the coffee au bain marie. Leave to cool
- Mix the butter and sugar until the mixtue is soft and then add the egg yolks one by one.
- Mix flour, cocaopowder and baking powder in fold this in parts through the eggbutter mixture. Fold in the melted chocolate, the almonds and the macaroons too.
- Whip the eggwhites to stiff peaks and carefully fold those through the batter as well.
- Divide the mixture between the two baking tins and bake both cakes for about 45 minutes in the oven or till they are done. Protect the top of the cake with aluminium foil after 30 minutes if needed.
- There are several ways of making ganache but Alex makes it by bringing the cream to the boil and then pouring it over the chocolate. Keep stirring until all the chocolate has melted into the cream. Leave to cool.
- Stack the cakes on top of eachother with the ganache in between.
- For making the chocolate wrap around the cake measure the total height of your cake (measure the finished one with the stacked cakes and the ganache in between).
- From baking paper cut a piece that is a little higher then the height of the cake and a little longer then the circumference of the cake.
- Put this piece of paper onto a larger piece of paper and lay it out flat on the table.
- Melt the chocolate au bain marie. Pour the melted chocolate on the piece of baking paper and spread it out thinly. Leave to cool of a little bit but it still needs to be flexible enough to wrap around the cake. It shouldn't drip too much (although you will see in the little video that it did on ours..)
- Grab the piece of paper with the chocolate on it and carefully wrap this around your cake. Press it slightly to the cake and put in the fridge.
- After about 20 minutes take it out of the fridge and remove the paper from the chocolate and decorate the cake with lots of fruit in the bottom part of the cake.
- Note
- Please note that the quantities mentioned here are for 2 smaller cakes or one really big one. The size depends on the baking form size you use so if you want just one normal sized cake, you might be better off dividing the qty's in two.
Disclaimer
The nutritional values above are calculated per portion. The details are based on standard nutritional tables and do not constitute a professional nutritional advice.
