devil's food bundt cake with blackberries and a chocolate ganache

devil's food bundt cake with blackberries and a chocolate ganache

• 7 Dec 2020

2 of my workmates recently celebrated birthdays. Originally I'd planned on making a hazelnut sponge sandwiched with cream and blackberries for their birthday morning tea. However last Sunday when the time came to make the cake and with only 3 hours sleep under my belt, I couldn't face the thought of grinding up all those nuts so I decided I'd go with an easy to make chocolate cake.

Claire Ptak's Devil's food cake immediately came to mind which I fancied up by baking it in a bundt tin. In the batter I used hot espresso instead of hot water; topped the cake with some dark chocolate ganache and finished it off with some of those blackberries. It looked pretty fancy.

Here's the recipe for you adapted from here which makes a small bundt cake. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

 

Claire Ptak’s Devil’s Food Cake with Chocolate Ganache 
Cake
110g plain flour
50g cocoa powder
½ tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp baking powder
1 cup caster sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g buttermilk or plain yoghurt
50g vegetable oil
112g hot coffee

Chocolate Ganache
60g cream cheese
¼ tsp espresso powder
60g dark chocolate (60%), finely chopped

To decorate
A few berries
Chocolate shards

Cake 
Preheat the oven to 170°C. Grease and flour a small bundt tin and place in the fridge while you make the cake batter.

Measure the dry ingredients, including the caster sugar, into a large mixing bowl and whisk with a balloon whisk to distribute the salt, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder evenly throughout the other dry ingredients.

In another bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients (except for the hot coffee). Once they are well mixed together, slowly whisk in the coffee.

Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in half of the wet mixture. Starting in the middle of the bowl, whisk in a clockwise, circular motion. Resist the temptation to switch direction or you’ll end up with lumps of dry ingredients. Gradually add the remaining wet ingredients until you have a smooth, liquid batter.

Pour the batter into your tin (s) right away and bake for 40 minutes until the top is springy to the touch and an inserted skewer comes out clean. Place on a cooling rack for 10 minutes before gently easing the sides away with a small knife. Place a small piece of baking paper onto the cooling rack and invert the cake onto the paper. The cake is quite sticky so the baking paper will stop the cake adhering to the cooling rack. Cool completely before topping with the ganache.

Ganache
In a small saucepan, heat the cream to boiling point. Stir in the espresso powder and mix until it dissolves. Place the chopped chocolate in a small bowl, then pour the hot cream over the chocolate and allow to stand for a few minutes until the chocolate starts to melt. Stir the chocolate until its smooth then put the ganache to one side to thicken a little.

To assemble
Place cake onto a serving plate. Drizzle the ganache decoratively over the cake. Refrigerate the cake for about 30 minutes so the ganache firms a little before topping with the berries and chocolate shards. Serve the cake at room temperature.

Can you believe Christmas is almost here? I'll be doing Christmas Week again this year starting from Monday December 14. Expect 5 days of Christmas treats with an unintended berries and cream theme. 

 

See you all again next week. 

Bye for now, 

Jillian