Chocolate layer cake

 

One of my brother’s friends is having a birthday party tonight. Every guest is supposed to make  something sweet; of course my brother took the easy route by asking me to bake something. He said I could make whatever I wanted. It can get a bit overwhelming, when you get complete free range like that, can’t it? There are so many things I want to bake, and sometimes it’s hard to decide. Especially when you’re not the one who will be doing the eating. What if my brother’s friends – and the birthday boy! – don’t like what I chose? In the end I decided to go with chocolate. Because, honestly, who doesn’t like chocolate? I’m very pleased with the end result and, to be honest, slightly bitter that I have to give this whole cake away without being able to have a taste!

I took this Devil’s Food cake recipe from this post; I decided to go with a vanilla butter cream instead of the meringue frosting they used. I got some inspiration for the decoration from this lovely post but ended up using (store bought) meringue to top off the cake instead of piping even more butter cream on top of the ganache. I was afraid it’d be a bit of a butter cream overkill!

Rosas spritz cookies

 

 

 

It’s been a while. Again. I wish I had an exciting story to tell, like that I’ve been traveling to far-away countries and discovering new cultures, or even that I’ve been working really hard and making lots of money. But no. I did travel a bit though, I went to Sweden to visit my friend Jessie. And I have been working, and earning a little money – slowly trying to save up. But nothing grand enough happened to excuse this long absence. I think I just wasn’t feeling it – I wasn’t really feeling anything there for a moment, but I like to think that I’m back, with a plan even. But more on that another time (another time soon).

If there was something I was feeling though, it were these cookies. I baked these mid-March (auch, what took so long?) and they were amazing. I got the original cookie recipe here from iambaker.net. Getting the shape right (and I didn’t really get it right) was very tough. I didn’t have the right star tip (though I did buy it on Saturday! I’m thinking about creaming up some butter and practicing a bit with it soon) and the dough was too hard for me to get through my pastry bag – I broke like 4 of them trying to make these cookies! Next time I’m going to use a little less flour and make sure my butter is a bit warmer.

I used a dark chocolate ganache as a center for these sandwich cookies – and it was amazing. The combination of the flavor and the texture of these cookies with the softness of the ganache and the taste of the chocolate was divine. I ate so many of these, geez.

All about chocolate

Let’s be honest, chocolate is pretty damn amazing, isn’t it? Yeah – it really is. The only moments I ever feel quite proud to be Belgian is when the topic shifts to chocolate (as it tends to do from time to time). Just the other day I was watching the BBC and the Hairy Bikers’ bakaction episode was set in Belgium (Bruges) and they were talking about chocolate. Yeah, no surprise there, but to see them speak so highly of our chocolate (as they should!) made me feel quite proud – even though I personally have nothing to do with the tradition of Belgian chocolate. But I guess that’s how that works, national pride.

There will be a couple of different things in this post. First I’ll talk a bit about tempering chocolate (melting it the “proper” way) and then I’ll give a couple of quick ganache recipes. Good stuff all around, I assure you!