Triple Chocolate Cake

Hello there :-)

So for Sarah's birthday today (HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARAH!), I decided to bake her a chocolate cake since chocolate was her favourite flavour and it was my first time making a full blown cake - I usually just bake cupcakes. I didn't make a super large one, just one small one enough for all of us with a rubber cake mould I bought from Daiso but I think it was quite a success and I'm rather pleased with how it turned out. 

I made reference to one of my favourite Youtube Channel, Sorted's recipe for their chocolate cake and the video for their recipe is below. I could go on and on raving about this Youtube Channel but I'll save that for another day :-) Feel free to watch this video - I actually made my own twist to it, especially because I used a mini cake tin and not the huge one like theirs. 

Here is Li Yin's twist on Sorted's recipe for chocolate cake - I call it the triple chocolate cake because there's a chocolate sponge, chocolate buttercream in between the layers and a smooth chocolate ganache coating it :-) 

TRIPLE CHOCOLATE CAKE

Ingredients:

1. 3 eggs

2. 170g butter

3. 170g sugar

4. 150g flour

5. 1.5 teaspoons baking powder

6. 20g cocoa powder

7. 90g dark chocolate (feel free to use more actually)

8. 90ml milk

For the buttercream: 

1. 225g butter

2. 450g icing sugar (rule of thumb: double the butter)

3. 60g cocoa powder

4. 1 tablesppon hot water

For the ganache: 

1. 225g dark chocolate

2. 225ml double cream (I used thickened cream, it should be the same thing)

Oh and marshmallows for decoration! :-) 

For the cake sponges itself: 

1. Melt your chocolate and milk over a stove or in a microwave (I can't use the microwave for nuts - always burn my chocolate no matter what) 

2. Once the chocolate is all melted, set it aside to cool

3. Preheat your oven to 190 degree Celcius (very important!)
4. Grease your mini cake tin with cooking spray (though I just used an oil soaked napkin to rub around)

5. Cream your butter and sugar till pale and fluffy - I don't actually have a proper mixer so baking is usually my monthly workout of sorts for my arms 

Yes I know my bowl is super asian :-) 

6. Add your eggs one by one and mix them into your mix

7. Once that's combined, fold in your flour, baking powder, cocoa powder

8. And of course, the cooled melted chocolate and milk mixture

9. Once that's all mixed well (be sure not to overmix), pour the batter into the mini cake tin (there should be three layers of cake so split your batter into three equal parts)

10. Bake for 20 minutes and check it by inserting a toothpick in the middle - if it comes out clean, it should be alright. 

11. When the cakes are done, leave them on a cooling rack to cool for at least 20 minutes

I have 4 layers here but one of the layers actually didn't come out cleanly (i.e. it was broken into pieces), so I couldn't use that

For the chocolate buttercream: 

1. Just whip the butter, icing sugar and cocoa powder together, before adding the hot water to combine it at the end - this is the first time I made a successful buttercream; usually it's too runny or too stiff

2. Transfer it into a piping bag for easy application later - you can really just use a knife to spread it on the cake but I like piping stuff

For the chocolate ganache: 

1. Boil your double/ thickened cream

2. Pour the cream over the chocolate pieces and let it sit for 1 minute without stirring

3. Go forth and stir after one minute!

4. You should get a nice smooth ganache - let it cool a bit before pouring it over the cake

And assemble the three layers together: (rather self explanatory but -)

1. Place the cake on several pieces of baking paper and pipe the buttercream generously onto the cake

2. Add another cake layer! :-) 

3. Pipe again (as can be seen above, I had tons of fun for this layer) 

4. Place the final cake layer on top and pour your ganache all over the cake! :-) 

Let it flow, let if flow 

5. Decorate as desired - I used mini marshmallows! :-) 

6. Let it dry for around 10 minutes and remove the baking paper at the bottom - there should be a nice neat finish

And there you have it - a triple chocolate cake that I baked for Sarah, I really hope she liked it! :-) I personally think this cake was rather well received so I'm quite happy and I hope Sarah has had an amazing day as well; will blog more about her birthday on another day. For now, enjoy this cake :-) 

Cutting :-) 

The layers of the cake - it was a bit dense though, sort of like a brownie :-)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARAH :-)

The blog post about your actual birthday celebration shall come... at a later date.