Chocolate Feather Bed for my BIL - Birthday Week #2

The 2nd cake of the week. Yes, I made 3 birthday cakes within 6 days. Lydia's 2nd cake will be posted on Friday. I'm finding time to get the pictures done. Not easy to squeeze time. Which is why my posts are rarely 2 weeks fresh. :p

I made this cake for my one and only BIL, Mike's younger brother Nic. He likes cream cakes, and last year I made him a not so successful Chocolate Banana Cake. His birthday and Lydia's is just 3 days apart :)

I've been eyeing this recipe from Rose's Heavenly Cakes for a long long time. It's a flourless cake that is supposed to taste pretty light in texture, not in flavour. It is intensely chocolatey. I didn't even use the type of chocolate stated as I do not have that in hand. I only have the regular dark compound choc. And it already tasted delicious. Wonder how it would be with a good choc. Super dee duper good I guess.

I halved her recipe and got myself a nice 8-servings cake, about the size of 5X7inches about 2 inches in height(without curls). I chose her second method to make the filling as I found the direct beating of ganache leaves me with not much extra filling compared to unwhipped, except that it feels lighter. When I beat the cream separately, the volume of the filling is more, making it even lighter in texture. My cake looks dense... hmmm..maybe it's due to me covering it with a tray instead of a towel (condensation of vapour hence condensing of cake :p), but it still taste absolutely light. It's flourless!!!!

Everybody loved it and I am already thinking of ways to impart this technique to make other flavours and filling. It's very easy to do, provided you know the basic techniques like folding, whipping whites and whipping dairy cream.

Chocolate Feather Bed

Recipe source: Rose's Heavenly Cakes 

Instructions rewritten based on my experience

Cake

113gm dark chocolate (53-62% preferred, but I used Beryl’s Dark Compound Chocolate)
50 +25gm caster sugar
180gm egg whites (from 5 Grade A eggs, recipe says 6 large eggs, but our Grade A eggs are 65gm each, not 55gm)
112gm egg yolks (from 5 Grade A eggs, smaller eggs will need more eggs to achieve 112gm)
¾ tsp cream of tartar

1. Preheat oven to 160(fan)/180 and fully line a 17X12 inch baking pan (the pan that comes with your built in oven). Make sure you have overlaps so that you can lift the cake out easily. (I prefer doing this step after preparing the yolks as my oven only takes 6 minutes to preheat)
2. Melt chocolate. Stir and set aside to cool as you prepare the egg yolks(step 3). Let it turn warm to touch but still fluid.
3. Beat yolks with 50gm sugar on high speed for 5 mins until pale and fluffy. Scrape in the melted chocolate and beat on medium speed until well incorporated. Scrape the sides as needed.
4. In another clean bowl, beat egg whites until frothy. Put in cream of tartar and beat until soft peaks. Gradually beat in the 25gm sugar and beat the whites until stiff.
5. Fold 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture. Pour the lightened chocolate mixture back into the whites and gently fold until incorporated.
6. Pour batter into pan and level surface.
7. Bake for 16 minutes (yes I did that exactly as per the book) on the lower 3rd of the oven. Cake is done when it has lost its shine and springs back when lightly pressed.
8. Place baked cake on wire rack to cool and place a towel over it to prevent it from drying out. (I used another tray, no big towel :p)
9. When cake has totally cooled, snip cake into 4 pieces (with paper still underneath, do not peel) and stack on top of each other. Place stacked cake into a container (I used Tupperware) and chill for 12 hours. (I chilled overnight)

Light Whipped Ganache Filling
113gm dark chocolate (53-62% preferred, but I used Beryl’s Dark Compound Chocolate)
58 + 174gm whipping cream
½ tsp vanilla extract
Dark chocolate curls for decoration

1. Place mixing bowl in freezer (if you’re using ceramic or glass bowl. But if you are using stainless steel, skip this step and beat the cream later over a ice waterbath)
2. Place dark choc with 58gm whipping cream in a microwavable container and zap on high, stirring every 10 seconds to see if it’s melted. Or you place the container over some hot water to melt the chocolate in cream. Make sure the chocolate has fully melted in the cream and let it cool down, but still fluid.
3. Remove bowl from freezer and beat whipping cream until traces of beater marks shows distinctly. Scrape in the chocolate mixture and vanilla and beat until cream mounds softly (like whipped cream). Be careful of over whipping, or else the cream turns grainy. Use the cream immediately

Assembly
1. Remove cake layers from fridge.
2. Put a bit of the cream onto cake board/plate (the small bit of cream acts like glue to the plate/board)
3. Take one layer of cake, and peel off the lining paper and place one piece of cake onto the board
4. Spread ¼ of the cream onto the cake.
5. Peel another layer of cake and place it on top of the 1st layer. Spread another ¼ of the cream on top. Repeat until finish.
6. Sprinkle chocolate curls on top as decoration.
7. Chill cake thoroughly again and trim the sides to get a smooth bare sided cake to show off the layers.

The sides of the whole cake may not look as pretty as it is inside as I tried to trim off as little as I could. The sides of the baked cake sheet are taller than the insides, so unless you trim off at least one inch off the sides of the assembled cake, you won't get it nice like what you see from the cut up pics.

Here's Lyanne cleaning up my beaters after preparing the filling. She licked them so clean! Saved me dish detergent money. LOL.