« More cupcakes, and a RANT. | Main | Cakes: take 4 - Raspberry, Almond and Ricotta revisited. »
Third cake experiment - Dark Chocolate and Lemon
June 26, 2008
This is the third, and so far the best, cake experiment. Thanks for all your comments on the cakes so far, and the sympathies for giving cakes to those losers last week.
I thought about the cakes I'd made so far, and having read loads of recipes, I finally came up with some of my own ideas for cakes. I'm not terribly individual, and will still be using components of other people's recipes!
This week I decided to try a very dark chocolate cake, filled with tangy lemon curd, and covered in a big swirl of chocolate ganache. I also found some little jelly (vegetarian jelly!) lemon slices to put on top.
I used the recipe here to make the chocolate cakes - I used some incredible chocolate that was on offer in the shops, 85% organic dark chocolate! Here are the cakes:
Then I bought some posh lemon curd, although I will probably make my own for the real thing (and use the leftover lemon peel to make my own candied lemon to put on top) and filled the cupcakes.
I fitted in about 1.5 teaspoons of filling. I thought it was divine, but some testers thought there was too much - maybe I'll make a smaller hole next time and just put in 1 teaspoon. Next I made chocolate ganache, and let it sit until it was thick enough to pipe, and put some swirls on top. I didn't do a very good job - this one was the best:
I realised as I was icing that the ganache was too rich to have a big swirl on each cake, and it was hard to do it neatly. So I decided to just have a layer of smooth icing instead:
For the real thing, I won't let the ganache sit until it's quite firm before icing, so it will be smoother, neater and shinier.
These cakes scored 86.6% of all available marks - very pleased with that! The highest score was for taste of frosting and the lowest was for texture of frosting (I told everyone my idea to have it shinier next time and they agreed).
I only have one week left at work now before I move to the Southampton office! So probably only one more official trial of cakes to go - I'll be too shy of the people in the new office as I don't know them to make them fill out forms!
Posted by jen at June 26, 2008 11:15 AM
Comments
Yum - these sound fantastic! Making your new workmates into cupcake testers might make you lots of new friends very quickly. :)
Posted by: Jen at June 26, 2008 01:55 PM
Do you know about the cupcake cook book called Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World? It's by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and it's got about 75 recipes in there, including green tea, peanut butter, apple cider etc. My favourite so far is the mocha with toasted coconut mmmmmm. Definitely check it out, i couldn't recommend it more!
Posted by: Marianne at June 26, 2008 10:18 PM
Gosh durn, you and the cupcakes and my diet!!
They all look great.
Vicki
Posted by: vicki at June 26, 2008 11:40 PM
Oooh, those sound the best to me out of the three you've made so far. Yum!
Posted by: Johanna at June 27, 2008 12:37 AM
Looks like you're getting the hang of it!
Posted by: the Lady at June 27, 2008 01:43 AM
Those look amazing! You've made me want one and it's only 6a.m.
I think bringing cupcakes to a new job would be the best ice breaker in the world tho.
Posted by: sil at June 27, 2008 02:24 PM
I am tickled by your systematic / checklist approach to testing the cakes - was it your auditor / accountancy training or your chemistry experiments background that was the key driver?? :-) Wish I worked in your office - I love cakes! Good luck with your next move.
Posted by: Kay at June 27, 2008 08:11 PM
whoa! those look reeeeally good! yum.
Posted by: Lauren at June 28, 2008 01:33 AM
I think that offering people cake & then chatting about the results is an ideal way to get to know people at your new office!
Posted by: TheKnittingBee at June 30, 2008 05:43 PM
My sister got married on saturday and had cupcakes instead of a wedding cake. They were lovely. Making your own is very impressive (my sister bought hers)!!
Posted by: Gemma Bryan at June 30, 2008 06:56 PM