HCB: Devil’s Food Cake with Midnight Ganache

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I just realized that the last post I did for my Heavenly Cake Group was the Cradle Cake, which was back in January – Yikes!  I’m surprise Marie has not kicked my butt out of the club.

I do have to come clean and blame the fact that the last couple of cakes in the list have just not been favorites of mine, and I know myself well to know that if I’m not feeling it, then most likely I not going to make the effort. 

But, I have missed it.

So, when I saw this weeks’ choice, I was ready to go, no only because I been craving chocolate cake like crazy as of late, but I also had a house party to go to on Saturday night and I figure this was a perfect cake to take and share. 

This cake is the reason I love chocolate so much and Rose’s recipes go straight to my dark chocolate heart.  The ganache is made with cocoa and chocolate, plus caramel, just to give it a punch and make it even richer.  While the recipes does give you the option of adding dried sour cherries soaked in Cognac, I opted out of this – the fruit, not the liquor.

The cake does not fall behind either, since uses 99% cacao chocolate, cocoa powder and if that does not make it deeper in chocolate flavor, how about using Muscovado sugar to give it an extra punch? Yep, the cake is like a chocolate explosion.  The batter (yes, I do try my cake batters) was decadent and I almost had to stop myself from eating a spoonful of the stuff.

I started the cake early in the day, since the plan ahead tells you to make the ganache at least SIX hours before using it.  Miss your cocoa powder with the boiling water, vanilla extract and Cognac (without the cherries).  Then chopped up an additional 200 grams of dark chocolate (since I did not want to dirty up my food processor, I basically chopped it up with my chisel and put in a bowl to await the hot, caramel.  Then it was sugar time.

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HCB: Cradle Cake

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I have been waiting for this cake for a bit now.  Somehow every time I would open Rose’s Heavenly Cakes book, it seem to fall on this page.  And every time I would hope that Marie would put it in rotation.

This week the waiting was over.  This week this was the cake on the spotlight.

At first glance, the cake does not look like much and I actually thought it was a plain pound cake with a crusty shell.  Which to be honest, I’m a total sucker for.  I have written before how heavy, pound cakes, are actually my favorite types of cakes.  Maybe because they remind me of they types of cakes my “nonna” and I would bake when I was young, or the fact that that buttery flavor just screams comfort food at it’s best.

So this simple cake was screaming my name.

Boy, was I wrong.  This cake actually is a variation of the original recipe that won the Pillsbury bake-off in 1950.  Upon closer reading of the whole thing, I realized that the crusty outer of the cake is made up of a dacquoise made with pecan and chocolate which hugs the simple butter cake – thus the “cradle” in the name.

HELLO CAKE!  You just jumped to captivating status in my world.

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HCB: Génoise Tres Café

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See that pretty picture above of the pretty cake.

It looks all innocent like.

But, don’t let it fool you.

Because that pretty, innocent cake did not play nice with me.

You would figure that after almost a year of baking with the HCB group, I would have certain steps engrave in my brain.  And that list of steps should read like this:

  • READ THE WHOLE RECIPE, not once, not twice, not three times, but four times
  • READ IT AGAIN, just in case.
  • Stop being confident and cocky.
  • No trash talk back to the cake 

Instead it reads like this: 

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