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Cooking
Chocolate Cake with Chocolate and Raspberry Pralines
· 8 servings
Tip:
This cake is tall but not very wide, so use wooden cake dowels to support it. I also didn't bake the sponge in a proper cake tin – I used two 17 cm diameter saucepans and one 19 cm diameter saucepan.
Weigh your eggs
Weigh the eggs in their shells. Mine came to 480 g – yours will almost certainly be a bit different. Whatever number you get, that's how many grams of sugar you'll need.
Weigh out your ingredients in advance
I use caster sugar for baking, but granulated sugar works just as well. Get your plain flour ready too. Weigh out 50 g less flour than the weight of your eggs in their shells, because instead of that 50 g of flour, you'll use 50 g of good-quality cocoa powder. Mix it into the flour in a bowl.
Whip the egg whites
Preheat the oven to 175°C. Separate the egg yolks from the whites, keeping the yolks ready in a small bowl. Whip the whites in a stand mixer with the whisk attachment until stiff, then transfer them to the large bowl you'll use for the batter.
Egg yolk cream
Put the yolks in the stand mixer bowl – I don't even bother washing out the bowl used for the whites, no need. Add the sugar to the yolks and start whisking. Gradually pour in 18 tablespoons of hot water. Keep whisking until the sugar has completely dissolved and you're left with a wonderful, sweet egg yolk cream.
Fold gently
You now have the whipped egg whites in the large bowl. Alternate between adding the flour-cocoa mixture and the yolk cream. Fold gently so you don't knock too much air out of the whites.
Divide the batter between the tins
Divide the sponge batter evenly between the three prepared tins – the saucepans, which you've greased and dusted beforehand. All three should fit on the same oven rack side by side. Bake for about 45 minutes.
The skewer test
Don't open the oven for the first half hour, or the sponge may sink. After that, you can check if it's done. The centre should feel firm to the touch. Confirm by inserting a skewer into the middle – if it comes out clean, it's ready.
Cool and turn out
Take all three tins – saucepans out and set them on a wire rack to cool completely. Once fully cooled, turn the sponges out.
Chocolate cream
In a small saucepan, bring 300 ml of whipping cream to the boil. Remove from the heat and add 90 g of Willie's Cacao Venezuelan Black Carenero, roughly chopped beforehand. 90 g is one of the two bars you'll find in the pack.
Whisk it up
Let the chocolate sit in the hot cream for about five minutes, then stir with a whisk. In the stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat together the butter and icing sugar. Add the chocolate mixture a spoonful at a time.
Whisk in the mascarpone
Once everything is well combined, start adding the mascarpone, about half a tub at a time, whisking thoroughly after each addition. Work through the full 1 kg of mascarpone this way.
Stir well
Give the finished whipped cream a good, thorough stir with a large wooden spoon so it's not too airy – this helps stop the cake layers from sliding apart.
The second cream
Bring another 100 g of cream to the boil. Add 90 g of chopped Willie's Cacao Venezuelan Black Carenero.
Stir in the sour cream
Let it sit for five minutes, then stir with a whisk. Gradually add the sour cream, stirring it into the chocolate mixture. The finished cream will be a little darker than the mascarpone cream. Use it to fill one or two of the cake's layers.
Chill the creams and slice the sponges
Your creams are ready – chill them in the fridge for an hour. Now slice the sponges: you have three baked sponge cakes in total. Cut each one into two, so you end up with three layers from each sponge. Spread raspberry jam over each layer.
Layering and filling
The bottom of the cake will be the sponge from the 19 cm saucepan. Start with the darker sour cream chocolate mixture to join the first two layers together. Depending on how much cream you use, you might even manage to join the second and third layers too.
Smooth the sides
If the darker cream runs out, use a little of the mascarpone cream as well. Smooth the sides – they don't need to be perfectly finished yet, just filled in enough so there are no gaps or holes. Chill this first assembled sponge in the fridge.
Repeat the process
Continue with the other two sliced sponges, now using the mascarpone cream. Portion it out so you'll still have enough left to coat the whole cake once it's assembled. Fill each sponge with cream and smooth the edges so the sides are even.
Chill
Chill everything in the fridge, ideally for three to four hours, or even overnight.
Final assembly
Now stack all the sponges on top of each other, with the 19 cm one at the bottom, of course. Secure the layers with wooden cake dowels, trimmed so they're completely hidden inside the cake. Then coat the whole cake, sides and top, with the remaining cream.
Decorating the sides
I finished mine by running a fork up and down the sides and around the whole cake to create lines – I set the cake on a turntable and turned it while dragging the fork around to get an even pattern. Chill the cake in the fridge for an hour before moving on to the finishing touches.
Ganache
Bring 100 g of cream to the boil. Break in the Willie's Cacao Rio Caribe Gold chocolate and let it sit for five minutes, then stir with a whisk to make a smooth chocolate ganache. Let it cool. Once cooled, spread it over the sides of the cake to fill in the fork lines in the cream.
Decorating with pralines
Smooth the ganache neatly, then arrange the raspberry pralines on top of the cake. And you're done – hooray!