My bro whatsapp me on Thu:
‘Sis, can I order a cake from you? Small small ok le. =)’
Me: ‘Can, What cake you
want? Need décor? For what occasion?’
Bro: ‘Jolene (his gf)
birthday. If is just chocolate cake will it be abit dull huh?’
Me: ‘She cannot eat strawberries
right?’
Bro: ‘Cannot, Kiwi also
cannot.’
Me: ‘Raspberry?’
Bro: ‘She never eat before.’
Me: ‘ok.. think better not..
like same family with strawberry.. I see what I can do ba..’
I usually fill and decorate
chocolate cake with strawberries & raspberries because they taste so good
together and the red is so pretty on chocolate. But his gf is allergic to strawberries, so I have to think of something
else.
Me: When you need the cake?
Bro: ‘This Sunday..’
Faint.. my bro didn’t give
me much time to work with. My bro gf is a very sweet girl and always come and
help me babysit so I really wanted to do a nice cake for her. And suddenly a
wonderful idea came into my mind. How about baking a cake with has hearts in
the center? Hm… sound intriguing.. but I don’t have the special mould.. So I
went on Google and found a tutorial that teaches how to do it manually. I
decided to take a huge risk in trying it out.
When I handed the cake to my
bro on Sunday afternoon, I told him that if when his gf cut open the cake and it
didn’t show a nice heart shape, don’t tell her gf it’s meant to be a heart
shaped.. hahha…
And then I waited the whole
day till finally he sent me the photos late at night. It’s a success! I am
super happy that the risk paid off!
Not only is the hearts in
the cake a beautiful surprise, the cake also received rave feedback from his gf
family.
 |
| :: Surprise hearts embedded inside the cake :: |
And so another pretty recipe
to archive here!
This Surprise Hearts in
Center Chocolate Cake require me to bake two cakes and have a lot of patience. I
personally find the difficulty level is pretty high as I don’t have 100%
success rate at baking cake.
First, I had to bake a cake
for the pink hearts. The recipe that I used is the Golden Sponge Cake recipe
from Nasi Lemak Lover’s blog.
Golden Sponge Cake Recipe
(6 inch removable base cake
pan)
Ingredients:
50g butter (I used
non-salted)
50g cake flour (sifted)
6g corn starch (sieved
together with cake flour)
3 large egg yolks (my egg
size is approx 70g with shell)
55g milk + a few drops of
vanilla extract & pink color coloring (or any other colors of your choice)
3 large egg whites (my egg
size is approx 70g with shell)
50g caster sugar
How to do:
1. Melt the butter in a
saucepan till it starts to have small bubbles and remove from heat.
2. Add in the sifted flour
and stir till combined and transfer to a clean mixing bowl.
3. Add in the milk and mix
till well combined.
4. Add in the yolk one by
one and mix well with each addition.
5. In another clean, dry and
grease-free bowl, beat the egg whites till till foamy and add the sugar in
5. Continue to beat till the
meringue mixture becomes white, shiny and attain firm peak.
6. Mix in 1/3 of the
meringue to the yolk mixture to thin the mixture.
7. Fold in the remaining 2/3
meringue gently in 2 installments.
8. Pour into the cake pan at
one position slowly and shake the pan gently when done to level the cake
batter.
9. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 145 degree* (on oven thermometer, oven dial shows 120 degree) for 50 min or
till the skewer comes out clean.
10. Invert the cake pan and
let it completely cool before remove from pan.
*As each oven is different,
adjust the temperature according to your oven. Using this temperature, I get a nice tall cake but it still
has cracks at the top.
After the cake is removed from the pan, chilled the cake in
the fridge for a while as it will make the texture a bit firmer, easier for
cutting.
 |
| :: My pinkie sponge cake :: |
Next is to prepare the
hearts to be embedded into the chocolate cake. The original tutorial is shared by Karmarie from Cake Central
Preparing the Hearts
1. Slice the cake into 12
equal portions (see drawings below)
 |
| :: Top view of how the cake should be sliced :: |
 |
| :: The texture of the cake is very fine :: |
 |
| :: Side view of the cake slice :: |
 |
| :: The heart shape cut out :: |
2. Take one slice and lay it
flat and use a cookier cutter to cut out the heart shape.
3.To ensure that the heart
shape is cut in the same position of each slice, cut out a tracing paper to be
same size of the cake slice, position the cookie cutter onto the tracing paper,
trace out the outline and cut out the heart shape hole in the tracing paper.
4. Continue to cut out the
heart shape for every slice, using the tracing paper as guideline so that you
know where to cut.
5. Arrange the cut out
hearts into circular shape with the pointed side on top as tight as possible so
that there are no gaps in between. (see photo below) I arrange as I cut each
piece so that I won’t mixed up the position of the hearts.
 |
| :: Circular arrangement of the hearts cut out :: |
Next step is to prepare the
chocolate cake. The chocolate cake recipe is modified from the Golden Sponge
Cake above and the method is the same.
Chocolate Sponge Cake Recipe
(6 inch removable base cake
pan)
Ingredients:
50g butter (I used
non-salted)
40g cake flour (sifted)
10g non-sweeten cocoa powder
(sieved together with cake flour)
6g corn starch (sieved
together with cake flour)
3 large egg yolks (my egg
size is approx 70g with shell)
55g chocolate milk (I used
HL chocolate milk)
3 large egg whites (my egg
size is approx 70g with shell)
40g caster sugar
Putting the Hearts into the Cake
1. Once the cake batter is
ready as per the method above, gently pour some of the cake batter into the
cake pan and gently shake the pan so that the batter is leveled.
2. Gently pick up the
pre-arranged hearts, keeping their arrangement together while transferring and
place and place into the cake pan onto of the batter.
3. Use a ladle and scoop
some of the batter and gently fill the cake pan in the outer circumference of
the round of hearts first, use 1 hand to hold the hearts to keep them from
shifting.
4. Scoop some batter and
gently fill into the inner circumference of the round of hearts.
5. Continued this process
till all the batter is used up and the hearts are already fully submerged in
the batter.
6. Gently tap the bottom of
the pan and bake in the pre-heated oven at 145 degree for 50min or till the
skewer comes out clean.
7. Invert the cake pan and
let it completely cool before remove from pan.
*The cake is meant to served
inverted when it is out of the cake pan, meaning the bottom part should be at
the top so that the heart shape will appear up right. If the cake has domed,
shaved off the dome to get a flat surface.
 |
| :: It looks ordinary but the surprise is inside :: |
Covering the Cake with Ganache
Ingredients:
1/2 cup whip cream
1 cup semi sweet chocolate
chips
How to do:
1. Heat up the whip cream in
a sauce pan with low heat till it starts to bubble.
2. Pour over the chocolate
chips and keep stirring till all the chocolate melts.
3. Let it stand for a while
and stir occasionally.
4. The ganache is ready for
use once it is slightly cooled and thicken
5. Place the cake on a wire
rack with a bigger tray behind so that the ganache can drip down.
6. Pour ganache on top of
the cake*, and gently swirl the cake in circular motion so that the ganache
will flow and cover the whole cake. Continue the process till the whole cake is
full coated with ganache
*To get a smoother finish,
frost the cake with whip cream and chill in the fridge before applying the
ganache. As seen from the photo, the top of my cake is smoother as I only frost
the top of the cake, the side is without the whip cream layer.
I worked on the cake for 2 days that I was so tired at the end of it. So I went for minimalist look, just decor with some jelly beans and birthday girl's name in white chocolate.
Nothing complicated but I am loving this look ~ simple, clean and very modern!
 |
| :: Chocolate Ganache Cake with Surprise Hearts inside:: |
 |
| :: Surprise Heart Reveals! Photo courtesy of the Birthday Gal :: |
Happy Birthday, Jolene! Thank you for loving the cake!
No comments:
Post a Comment