Chocolate Layer Cake with Caramel Ganache

I was hoping for cooler, more chocolate-appropriate weather this weekend, but the thermometer is heading up toward 90, and who knows whether it will stop there. Even though a rich, heavy chocolate cake was not on my tempting-foods radar, I was unreasonably excited about it because it gave me a chance to use to new Fat Daddio's cake slicer and leveler. I don't think that Cooks of Crocus Hill has ever had a customer who carried on the way I did after asking if they had a cake slicer in stock. It turned out that they'd just received it the day before, and I was the first customer to buy it. They are probably thinking they should have ordered more. But before I could find out if the slicer worked better than my shaky bread knife, I had to bake the cake.

The cake is pretty easy. What makes it different from other chocolate cakes is that it's got a lot of butter, but one of its other ingredients is a small amount of canola oil. Compared to the German Chocolate Cake, it has a little less cocoa dissolved in the same amount of water, fewer eggs, more flour, less sugar, and more fat (butter plus oil vs. all oil).

I took my cake out of the oven after 25 minutes at 325 degrees on the convection setting. I didn't think it was done, but the cake tester came out empty. This is one of the first cakes I've managed to take out of the oven before it started to shrink away from the sides of the pan. Yes, I know that's what the directions say, but I usually second-guess myself and decide to bake it a few more minutes. Yet this cake, which I think achieved the perfect moment of doneness, is the only one that Jim said he thought was a bit dry.

The cake is a nice cake, but the star of this particular show is the ganache. Caramel makes me nervous for obvious reason--there's a very small window of opportunity for perfect caramel. Sometimes it's not amber enough, in which case it's not caramel, and sometimes it's no longer amber, in which case it's burnt. I dthink that this one was right on the money--if it had been left it on the burner any longer, it would have started to smell like carbon instead of caramel. I turned off the burner about 45 seconds after this picture was shot.

When you pour the hot cream into the caramel, it is suposed to "bubble up furiously," and indeed it does.

But after adding almost two cups of cream, the mixture looked like weak butterscotch, not like caramel. And when I tasted it straight out of the food processor, I thought the deep chocolate totally overwhelmed the caramel so that I figured the burnt sugary nuances would be lost.

On the other hand, I've never cut a cake so easily, so straightly, and so confidently. I'm in love with Fat Daddio's Cake Slicer and Leveler, and I want to use it every time I bake a cake, whether it needs it or not. It comes with zero directions--not a booklet, not a card, not a picture in universal cake decorating language--nada. My clever little brain figured out that if I unscrewed the feet and took them off, the wire landed at the exact middle of my cake. I used a gentle sawing motion, and got the cake cut in half before Jim could take the lens cap off his camera. I totally recommend this little gizmo.

My doubts about the cake returned when I started to frost it. As I have told myself on other occasions, "Self, remember that the ganache doesn't
become the proper consistency on a 90-degree summer day." But I was having dinner guests, and it was time to frost the cake, ready or not. Directions: "It should be the creamy consistency of softened butter." Reality: "It is like gloppy, creamy pudding."
I knew what was going to happen, and it did. The filling was okay, and my hopes lifted. (And can you see how nice and even the layers are?)

But when the ganache started to ooze down the sides, I know that this was not going to be a photogenic cake. And things went from bad to worse when I tried to remove the pieces of waxed paper from under the cake.


Oh well, I thought, there will be other bakers who will take pictures of a lovely chocolate layer cake with a ganache that is the proper consistency. But perhaps only I will have the Fat Daddio Slicer and Leveler. As seen on late night TV.
Tasting the ganache makes you feel like it merits a wine description: "Nicely integrated aroma of vanilla and dark chocolate. Flavors develop nicely and finish with lingering tastes of caramel and creme brulee. Rich mouth feel." It's a lovely chocolate cake, but it's more, and the more is the delicious caramel.
I don't know what else you should use this ganache on, but I do know that it shouldn't be limited to this cake. I also know that it might work better on a nice fall day, not in the dog days of summer.

TASTING PANEL:
Betty: "It melts in your mouth."
Sarah: "Light and airy. The raspberries are a perfect complement. And the ganache is phenomenal!"
James: "Yummy and chocolatey."
Jim: "Good chocolate flavor, but it seems a little dry. It goes well with red wine."