thursday baking - vanna's chocolate cake

Vanna's chocolate cake - Kate Fraser, Week 34

I made this chocolate cake for dessert and was expecting great things given how involved the method was but I have to say I was disappointed. It wasn't chocolately enough - the recipe calls for 150g of dark chocolate but no cocoa, and even though I added a couple of tablespoons but it still wasn't enough.


I made a couple of other changes to the recipe. I didn't add the 1 tablespoon of marmalade as specified, mainly because I didn't have any but also because I can't imagine how a tablespoon of marmalade would add anything other than annoying chunks of citrus peel. Yuk. I also iced the cake with chocolate ganache (150g chopped dark chocolate stirred into 150mls of hot cream) rather than the icing in the recipe. This was a good idea. The ganache and the raspberries were the best part of this cake.


Although the recipe says it's suitable for both good cooks and novice bakers I have to disagree. Unless you wanted to include every possible technique in one recipe - melting chocolate, creaming butter and sugar, whipping egg whites, folding etc... it also creates enough dishes to dishearten even the most experienced of kitchenhands. The recipe also claimed this cake was quite sticky and keeps well but I didn't agree with this either - I found the texture more "chalky" that moist. Perhaps I over cooked it? But I'm not willing to try again - there are better chocolate cake recipes out there.


So now that I've completely rubbished this recipe I'm not going to bother writing it up but will instead leave you with some pictures. This was one of those cakes that looked better than it tasted: