Chocolate Frosting and Ganache

S passed me an exersaucer and I was supposed to pass it to L for his son, J. The last time I met J was at his full month celebration but DH saw him in April and commented that J is as big sized as DD3. Thinking that J may be able to climb out of the exersaucer, I thought it's better to return it to S for her sister-in-law who's due in Aug.

It is very difficult to arrange a timing where both of us are free as her kids have enrichment classes over the weekends and mine has ballet on Sundays. With the long weekend in Singapore, I arranged to drop by her place yesterday. Since I will be back for the long weekend and with C and L staying in the same estate, S invited them to come along and we had a mini potluck gathering cum birthday celebration for J who will be turning 1 at the end of the month.

I did the steam moist chocolate cake upon I's request. As I was out the whole of National Day(Singapore's National Day falls on 9 Aug), I had to steam the cake early in the morning before leaving home. After sending brother M to the airport, we got home just in time to say the pledge. Whipped some non dairy cream and mixed with some melted chocolate to get the chocolate cream filling. Feeling lazy, I just sliced the cake into 2 layers instead of 3 and added some bananas. As compared to my cake baked last week, this cake is definitely more appetizing because of the thick layer of bananas.

As I do not want the chocolate ganache to flow down to the cake board and cause a mess, I lined the cake board with cling wrap. But when I tried to remove it, I accidentally removed a portion of the cream and ganache!

So I had to pipe some cream around the cake to cover up the "holes".

Over at S's place, she has got some strawberries leftover (pureed some for strawberry chiffon cake which I'll blog separately) so I just used some for garnishing.

This cake definitely needs a better touch up as I'm really bad and needs to polish up on my decorating skills.

I don't know why but this corner of the cake has got holes at the base. The rest are okay but I was too busy cutting and distributing the cake that I forgot to take more pics. Nevertheless, this cake was well received and J even asked his mom C to learn how to make this ;-)

I've got a foolproof chocolate ganache using Nestle cream but I don't usually stock up on this so I've been searching for a chocolate ganache without using cream and I found it here. Original recipe calls for 95g dark chocolate but I used only 60g as I'm basically not a chocolate person and prefer something less chocolatey.

Cream Filling

Ingredients

200g non-dairy whipping cream, whipped

30g dark chocolate

1 tbsp milk

Method

1. Melt chocolate and milk in a microwave/over a basin of hot water and set aside. Leave to cool slightly.
2. Add it into whipped cream and mix till incorporated.

Ganache

Ingredients

60g chocolate

25g butter

55g skim milk

Method

1. Warm butter and chopped chocolate over a basin of hot water and stir till a smooth chocolate paste is formed.
2. Stir in milk a third at a time.
3. Stirring the ganache constantly till it is slightly warm, smooth and runny, pour this ganache over the chilled and set cake from above. Tilt pan left and right gently to even out the ganache. Chill till set.