Celebration Mocha Cake with Mocha Ganache Topping

So the celebration here is two-fold. First, I made this for my mom and my hubby’s birthdays (combined) and it is definitely a cake for fancy celebration. This was after asking DH what kinda cake would my mom like for her birthday do you think? He said, she likes cinnamon. So I made a lovely cinnamon pecan yeast coffee cake and both of them looked at me with sad eyes and said, “This is a breakfast cake, where’s the birthday cake?” I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry, but luckily, my sense of humor has mostly stayed intact during these trying times of Corona, so I promised mom I’d make her a proper birthday cake, i.e. frosting and fancy.

DH snagged a ride on this train since they are both November babies. So, yeah, this is birthday worthy and coffee forward. I’ve made coffee flavored cakes and I love them but don’t worry, you taste the chocolate here as well. It’s a pow combo of the two.

One more note in the interests of transparency. It’s not a big cake. Although you make two layers, it’s rather a smallish cake, quite on purpose since we are such a small crowd but do make it into two layers as thinnish as those layers are. It affords you the chance of ganache topping in the middle thereby reinforcing the strong flavor of coffee and chocolate.

Preheat the oven to 375 F.

So start with the ganache topping in order to give it time to thicken up (I sometimes need to pop into the fridge for a bit, depends on how warm your room is).

Take your cream or non-dairy creamer and place in a bowl and pop into the microwave and heat just to boiling (not actually bubbling). If you have no microwave, don’t despair, heat the cream in a pot on the stove and heat just till bubbles form around the edges and take off the fire. Immediately remove and plunk your chocolate right into the bowl and add the coffee powder, and using a spatula, stir, stir, stir, gently till combined and a nice shiny chocolate look is achieved. A note here. I’ve found that brewed coffee just doesn’t give that same intense flavor as a tablespoon of instant does. Add make sure you put the coffee straight into the hot liquid so it dissolves properly.

After incorporated, add the powdered/confectioner’s/icing sugar. Set aside to thicken up.

Next prepare the cake batter. Remember, smallish cake here so if it seems like not so much batter, this is correct, no worries.

Take the cocoa and coffee powder and whisk together with the boiling water till smooth and immediately add the cubed butter/marg letting it mostly melt together.

When nice and melty, add vanilla.

Now you can do this in a mixer or two bowls, as you wish. In the second bowl, place your dry ingredients. Mix flour, baking powder, salt and sugar till combined. Now, in the wet ingredients bowl add the eggs last and whisk and pour over the dry ingredients.

pour over!

Stir together till completely incorporated, scrape bottom of the bowl, but as usual, don’t overmix. Prepare two 9 inch round pans by greasing and if you have parchment paper, place the parchment paper circles right on the oil spray and evenly distribute the cake batter between them. This will be very little! That’s correct, like so:

As you see it’s barely filling a quarter of the pan. That’s correct. Bake the layers in the hot oven for 18-20 minutes not more since they are thin, check with toothpick for doneness and let cool on wire racks. Showing you a pic of the done cakes so you see the thinness of the layers.

Back to our ganache topping while the cakes cool (which should be a bit faster than usual since they are thin layers). Check if the ganache is thick but spreadable since we want a bit of drip all about the cake. If not, pop into the fridge for around 10-15 minutes which should do the trick and anyway you may not, no no no, frost the cake while hot or warm. It will make the frosting run and half absorb into the cake, not a thing to be desired.

K, you’ve waited patiently and the cakes are COLD and so now you can frost. It’s much easier than thicker frosting since basically, you pour the ganache right on the first layer and smush about with a spatula (no crumb coat needed here).

Add just cover the top of the cake. Then take your second layer (peeling the parchment paper off both of course) and place carefully on top of first layer and pour the ganache in the middle of the cake and gently using a spatula (offset if you have one) push the ganache to the edges of the cake until it drips on the edges down the sides of the cake and do it all around the cake to form drips all about. It’s pretty and you don’t have to cover every inch of the cake.

To be served with a flourish to happy celebrants everywhere! Of course, if served with coffee or hot chocolate, all the better 😉 .

Celebration Mocha Cake with Mocha Ganache Topping

Ganache Topping:
3/4 cup cream or Rich’s non-dairy whip, unwhipped
3/4 cup chocolate chips or disks, semi sweet or dark chocolate
1 tablespoon instant coffee powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
3-5 tablespoons powdered sugar

Cake:
1/4 cup cocoa
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup butter/margarine, cubed
1/2 tablespoon coffee powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup sugar
1 1/4 cup flour

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Heat the cream/er in microwave in a bowl or stovetop in a small pot just below boiling, stovetop you will see bubbles around the edges. In full power microwave about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. Immediately add chocolate to bowl with hot cream (or remove pot from fire) and add coffee powder as well and whisk well till fully combined and smooth and add vanilla and powdered sugar. Set aside to thicken up.

Prepare cake. First oil spray two 9 inch round pans and put parchment rounds on bottom, set aside.

In a bowl put cocoa and coffee powder and pour over boiling water and stir very well from the bottom till smooth and immediately add cubed butter/marg. Stir till melty then add vanilla. Set aside. (You add eggs last so they don’t cool the mixture too much and cause the butter/marg to reharden).

Stir in a bowl the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar till mixed. Add your eggs now to the “wet” bowl and whisk and pour over dry ingredients, stirring till incorporated, scrape the bottom to make sure it’s all mixed.

Evenly divide the batter into the two prepared pans and bake for 18-20 minutes or until wooden toothpick inserted in cake comes out clean. Cool on wire racks. While cooling, check your ganache. It should be thickish but pourable.

When cakes are COLD, pour some ganache on first layer and coat only the top of the cake. Take second layer, place on top of first and pour the ganache on the middle of the cake, gently pushing a bit over the edge all around the cake to form drips. Let the ganache set (it stays softish, this is not a hard coating) and serve.