Chocolate Symphony

I had some leftover of the chocolate ganache from the Devil's Food Cake. I did not want to waste it and was thinking of what new cake creation can I come up with. Finally decided to bake the chocolate sponge cake first while squeezing some creative juices out of my brain. I normally do not manage to bake a very soft and spongy chocolate sponge. It usually turns out the the bottom is denser and harder than the top and I have to cut the bottom away. It's a lot of wastage. This time round, I tried to be a little more courageous by folding the the chocolate and cooled butter mixture more thoroughly into the fluffy egg and flour mixture. Pop it went into the oven. After waiting anxiously for about 30 minutes, I got a beautiful tall, soft and spongy chocolate sponge cake. No more denser and tougher base and wastage. Hooray! It's a success. Here's a picture of it.

Now that I have a beautiful sponge cake, I must make a scrumptious and beautiful cake. Since the chocolate sponge and chocolate ganache are of high percentage cocoa, I decided on a milk chocolate mousse layer to balance the taste. I got this milk chocolate mousse recipe from the Bittersweet book by Alice Medrich. It's just milk chocolate and heavy cream. No eggs and gelatine. Texture is soft and smooth. Yummy ...... Next comes the frosting for the cake. I wanted a shiny glaze for the cake and I took the lacquer glaze recipe from Rose's Heavenly Cakes by Rose Levy Beranbaum. It's very easy to make and forgiving too. Instead of using chocolate, it uses cocoa powder. The addition of corn syrup gives it the shine. With such a beautiful glaze, a simple decoraton will do. Since I have some almond nuts and pistachio at home, I used these two ingredients to decorate the cake. And it turned out to be elegant and beautiful.

The cake has three layers of sponge cake soaked in a little brandy sugar syrup. It comes with a layer of dark chocoate ganache laced with crunchy chocoate pearls and another layer of milk chocoate mousse. The chocolate lacquer glaze completes the cake.