Tehilla Hertz’s Chocolate Cake With Ganache Frosting

Tehilla is an old friend of my daughter Batya and was her matchmaker as well.  So, she has been in my good books for a long time!  She is great and her cake is too.  I love chocolate in many forms but am very fussy about chocolate cake.  It so often disappoints and is dry and you find yourself choking it down.  This cake is DH’s fave chocolate cake and it is truly moist and delicious and not too much of a hassle.  It’s crowning glory is its frosting and I have to control myself not to sneak over to the bowl when it’s waiting for the cake to cool and steal spoonfuls.

The frosting is basically a ganache and although it’s non dairy, it is simply amazing. Just YUM.  okay, I’ll calm down now.

The joke is, my hubby is the one who took the cake from yummy to elegant.  He has a thing about cakes that are rectangular (9 x 13) as opposed to round.  He claims they are more elegant in a round shape.  Okay, I’m game.  So I converted this to a round two layer cake and ya know what? He was right.  It is more elegant, and now, this is the only way I prepare it.  It always makes a hit with young and old. Every time I serve this is disappears amazingly fast and everyone looks around and says, what? No chocolate cake left?  Ya can’t get better than that! It’s also oil based and you only need one bowl for the cake.  Okay, you need another one for the frosting, ya got me there.  So onward!

Preheat the oven to 350 F/180 C.

Gather your ingredients.

Put the eggs and sugar together in the mixer and whip together about 5 minutes till they turn light in color and get fluffy like so:

Slowly add the oil, then the water whipping together and add the flour, dry instant pudding, baking powder and cocoa and stir till combined, using a spatula to make sure sides and bottom are scraped into the batter.

Prepare two 9 inch round cake pans by spraying with oil spray and placing rounds of parchment paper on spray to ensure ease of removal. Pour batter evenly between the two pans.

As you can see, the batter comes up about half way up the pan. Place in middle of oven and bake approximately 22-25 minutes or until a wooden toothpick comes out clean. Do not overbake. Note below, the cake can pull away a bit from the sides, that’s fine.

While cakes cool on wire racks completely, prepare topping.

Heat the (unwhipped) topping in the microwave till hot and pour the chocolate into the hot cream/non dairy topping and stir till melted completely.

Let cool and when you scoop up some topping, it should mound up a bit on your spoon. Remove parchment from cake rounds and placing one round on a platter, smooth some ganache topping onto top of cake all about but not on sides.

Place second cake on top and cover top in the same way. Then use ganache to cover sides. If you have some leftover topping, add to top of cake and make swirls or you can use a pastry bag and pipe some nice decorative topping on it. Now you’re ready to party!

Tehilla Hertz’s Chocolate Cake With Ganache Frosting

4 large eggs

1 cup sugar

2/3 cup oil

1 cup water

1 cup flour

1 small package instant vanilla pudding

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 cup cocoa

Topping:

1 small Rich’s Ready to Whip topping (or equivalent) unwhipped, 8 ounces/212 ml

200 grams/1 1/4 cups bittersweet chocolate chips or small disks

Preheat oven to 350 F/180 C.

Whip together the eggs and the sugar till fluffy.  Add the oil and the water and whip. Add the flour, pudding mixture, baking powder and cocoa and mix till combined, scraping sides and bottom with spatula to be sure all batter is combined. Prepare two 9 inch round pans with oil spray and place parchment rounds on bottom of pans. Pour batter evenly between the two pans. Bake 22-25 minutes till moist not dry checking with toothpick which should come out clean, do not overbake.  Let cool completely on wire racks.

Prepare the topping by heating cream till hot about 2 minutes or so in microwave till hot enough to melt chocolate. When hot, add chocolate and stir with whisk till smooth and melted. Let cool.

Then, when it sets up a bit, meaning, when you use a spoon and scoop some up it mounds in the spoon and doesn’t drip off, take the first cake and put onto a platter and peel off the parchment paper. Frost the top of the first cake and gently place the second layer on top and frost the top and then the sides. You should have some extra frosting. With the extra, make pretty swirls in the cake or take a pastry bag, fill and decorate the top with rosettes.