Chocolate Cappuccino Cake

Just in time to bake a cake for hubby's birthday after getting back from a golfing holiday in Hainan Island, China. Great golf courses, food and fun with a bunch of golfing buddies from the club. Weather this year was extremely hot, unexpected. Last year, all of us were unprepared and caught in an unusually cold weather. So we thought we'd better bring warmer clothing. But weather turned out otherwise .....

I can't remember when was the last time I baked a birthday cake for hubby, not to mention mine as our birthdays coincided with travels. I'm determined to bake one this year. Wanted to make a simple and fuss-free one - chocolate and coffee flavor. That's easy - chocolate genoise sponge cake with coffee-flavored fresh cream frosting, something I've not tried before. The closest one was coffee swiss meringue buttercream.

I've bought a silicone chablon stencil mat from TOTT sometime back and have not used it. Now it's the time to use it to make some chocolate deco pieces for the cake. Pretty easy to use. The only tough part is tempering the chocolate. Temperature at which chocolate is being melted is very sensitive and must be accurate in order to yield chocolates that have a sheen to it, do not melt easily when we hold them and have a clean snap sound when breaking them. I would say I'm pretty happy with my result ....

The coffee-flavored whipped cream is pretty easy to  make too. Just add a cup of strong espresso to the plain whipped cream and you have cappuccino - espresso with lots of milk.

Chocolate Cappuccino Cake (6" round cake)

(A) Chocolate Genoise

Refer to recipe from my previous post here.
Use 60% of the recipe to yield a 6" round cake.

(B) Coffee fresh cream frosting

Ingredients:
464g heavy cream
28g powdered sugar
2 tsp gelatin powder
1 cup strong espresso, about 25ml

Method:

1. Add the gelatin powder, powdered sugar and 116g of heavy cream into a saucepan.
2. Bring the mixture to just a boil, stirring constantly. It will thicken slightly.
3. Scrape the mixture into a small bowl and stir in the espresso and let it cool to room temperature.
4. In a chilled mixing bowl, whip the remaining cream just until traces of the beater marks begin to show. Add the cooled gelatin mixture in a steady stream, beating constantly. Whip just until stiff peaks form when the beater is raised.

Assembly:

1. Trim off the top and bottom crusts of the chocolate genoise sponge cake and slice it into 2 equal layers.
2. Place the first layer on a cardboard round and sprinkle with the khalua-flavored sugar syrup.
3. Spread a thin layer of the coffee fresh cream frosting onto the cake. Add the valrhona chocolate pearls evenly onto the frosting and top it with another layer of the fresh cream frosting. It will be about 1 cm thick.
4. Place the second layer of genoise sponge on top of the above and sprinkle with the khalua-flavored sugar syrup.
5. Frost the cake with the remaining frosting.
6. Decorate with the chocolate deco pieces and chocolate pearls or as per your desire.