Tyre Birthday Cake

This cake was made for a car enthusiast. The design was based on a specific BBS wheel for his E30 BMW. Inside is chocolate mudcake with couverture chocolate ganache, and the cake is covered in fondant. Happy birthday Nick!

How to make ganache for cake decorating

A nicely covered fondant cake with clean sharp edges needs a good foundation. There are different methods of preparing a cake for covering with fondant, but the way I have learnt is to use ganache. Ganache is made from chocolate and cream. It not only tastes great, but when made using the correct ratios, sets up firm allowing you to apply pressure to your cake to get sharp edges on your fondant.

For the purpose of preparing a cake to be covered with fondant, ganache needs to be made using the following ratios:

White chocolate ganache

1 cream: 3 white chocolate

Dark chocolate ganache

1 cream: 2 dark chocolate

Example recipe: For an 8” round cake sliced into 3 layers, I make about 1.2kg ganache which is either

300ml cream: 900g white chocolate

OR

400ml cream: 800g dark chocolate.

I use the ganache as a filling between my cake layers as well as covering the sides and top.

Microwave method

Put chocolate and cream in a microwave-safe bowl and heat on high for 1 minute. Stir the mixture. Microwave in short bursts (10-20 seconds at a time) until the chocolate has melted into the cream (stir after each burst to make sure all the chocolate has melted). Do not overheat your ganache – you want to heat it just enough so that the mix is smooth and there are no solid bits of chocolate left. Cool, cover and leave overnight to firm up at room temperature.

Stove top method

Place cream in a saucepan and bring just to a simmer. Pour the hot cream over your chocolate, allow the heat from the cream to melt your chocolate for 30 sec to 1 minute, and stir to combine. If you find there isn’t enough heat to melt the chocolate completely (e.g. in Winter I find the ambient temperature cools my cream/choc quickly), just microwave the mixture in short bursts to bring up the temperature of the ganache so that the chocolate can melt. If you chop your chocolate into smaller pieces it will melt faster so your hot cream should be enough to melt it all first go. Cool, cover and leave overnight to firm up at room temperature.

I use pure cream (not thickened) with at least 1 week’s shelf life remaining and 45-50% cocoa content couverture chocolate. I would avoid using very dark chocolate (e.g. 75% cocoa content) as the taste can be quite bitter for some, and the ganache sets very hard. When you’re about to use your ganache, it should have the consistency of peanut butter, so if it’s a little too hard just microwave it in short bursts to get it to the right consistency.

During warmer months you might want to increase the proportion of chocolate so that your ganache is firmer and holds up better in the heat. In Winter you may want to decrease the amount of chocolate or increase the amount of cream a little so that your ganache isn't too hard.

Halloween mini cupcakes

Halloween is just around the corner which means its time to bring out my inner baking ghoul. I wanted to stick to “cute” designs this year, as I don’t particularly fancy eating anything too gruesome and gory looking even if its really just sugar. 

The pumpkins and ghosts were made from fondant, and for the spiderwebs I piped out some melted white chocolate onto baking paper.

Chocolate & Walnut Brownies

Dark. Rich. Decadent. All the characteristics of a brownie I love. Brownies were one of the first dishes I learnt to bake. They are quite simple to make – a bit of melting and stirring together – really, not much more complicated than using a packet mix.

Today, I’m using Donna Hay’s chocolate brownie recipe with a few of my own tweaks.

Chocolate & Walnut Brownies

(Adapted from Donna Hay)

200g dark chocolate

250g unsalted butter

265g brown sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

35g cocoa

185g plain flour

½ tsp baking powder

100g walnuts, roughly chopped

Pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 170°C. Place the chocolate and butter in a small saucepan over low heat and stir until melted and smooth.

Chocolatey buttery pool. 

Allow the chocolate mix to cool a little, before adding vanilla and the eggs to the mixture one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in brown sugar and a pinch of salt. Sift cocoa, flour, baking powder into the chocolate mix and fold through. Fold through the walnuts. Pour the mixture into a 27cm by 18cm rectangular cake tin lined with baking paper. 

Ready to go in the oven.

Bake for 30 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer (skewer should have a few moist crumbs when poked in the centre).

Note: I added about 70g of white chocolate choc chips this time only because I had some lying around. You can see them poking their heads out of the batter above =)

[TIP: Crack your eggs into a separate bowl first to make sure you don’t crack a rotten egg straight into your chocolate mix. I’ve always followed this rule, and as luck would have it, the only time I decided not to was the only time I had a dud egg =S].

These were pretty good, although personally I prefer thinner chewier (as opposed to fudgey) brownies. If you do too I suggest using a slightly bigger pan than the one I have listed above.

Happy baking!

Ivory Wedding Cake

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to make the wedding cake for a friend of mine. This was my first wedding cake so as you can imagine, the pressure was on.

The cake was 3 tiered and covered in ivory fondant icing. White floral appliqués and piping adorned the sides, and a few sugar roses dusted with cream petal dust sat around the cake. A pair of Chinese wedding figurines stood on top to give a pop of colour.

Congratulations L + G!