Génoise cake, is a spongy firm type of cake primarily made of eggs, sugar, flour and sometimes butter. It's a great cake base, and is an often used cake style for decorated cakes and cakes with layers of something inbetween. It can also be glazed or soaked with flavored syrups or flavored liquors.
I used a recipe that called for:
4 eggs
75 grams unsalted butter (melted)
125 grams sugar
75 grams flour
and to make it chocolate 50 grams melted chocolate.
To me, grams are easier because I have a scale, and because I'm a horrible measurer of dry cups. (I don't bother leveling). The chocolate I happened to use was Ghiridellis since I always keep several bars of their chocolates around for baking and truffles and I used their unsweetened baking chocolate. I used plain, white refined sugar, and I used a gluten free flour mix I had made using:
4 cups rice flour
2/3 cups corn starch
2/3 cups potato starch
2/3 cups tapioca flour
Corn starch and potato starch are interchangable but because I have both on hand, I like doing half and half whenever I make flour. I will often try different flours in addition to these, including; quinoa, millet, soy, coconut, chestnut, buckwheat, oat and almond. I usually use it separately depending on what I make. I also leave out the xanthan/guar gum, since I ordinarily add it during the baking process since some gluten free baked goods tend to require more for some products (bread which often needs to be firm and chewy) and less for others (like certain cakes). However, since I haven't baked in a while (or even made pancakes in half a year) I managed to completely forget the xanthan gum! This likely resulted in a flatter, denser cake than I was expecting. It was still a good texture though, despite this omission. I'll be sure to use it next time, and then perhaps try coconut flour for extra moisture.
I actually used 5 eggs, because two of them were on the small side, so it should have averaged out to 4 large eggs.
The truffle material is simply chocolate and cream. Sometimes people will add corn syrup, or butter. I normally do chocolate and cream after having watched Jaques Torres do it back when the Food Network showed informational shows. This time around, I followed what was on the Ghiridelli bar wrapper of:
8 ounces 60% chocolate (2 bars)
6 Tbsp butter (58 grams)
1/3 cup heavy cream.
Normally I like my chocolate darker and I get their 70% but I was out and the store didn't have any that I saw.
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| Flour, melted butter, sugar |
Here is everything ready to go, except for the xanthan gum. It should have been added to the flour at this stage.
I started by preheating the oven to 350, putting a small pot of water on low on the stove, then blending the eggs on low in the blender, slowly streaming in the sugar until it was mixed. I then poured the eggs into a heatproof bowl (I used metal) and placed it over the pot of water. This would be considered a double boiler. I then whisked it for a while since the eggs just needed to be warmed, not cooked. It was at this point that I wished I had a hand mixer.
Once it became lukewarm and frothy, I took it off the heat and continued to whisk. You want to whisk until it's creamy and thick and will form ribbons when it drizzles back into the bowl. Had I known that it would take so long, I would have poured it into a mixer. In the meantime, I used a separate bowl on top of the warm water and placed the 50 grams (2 ounces) of baking chocolate where it would slowly melt.I gave up and started slowly dizzling in the butter while whisking and then sifting in the flour, followed by the melted chocolate. There wasn't a good chance to get pictures of any of those steps.
During that 25 minutes, I made the truffle material. I put the cream and the butter into a small saucepot and put that on low. While this was heating up, I broke the chocolate up into pieces and put it into a second steel bowl. Once the cream/butter was starting to bubble, I poured the mixture over the chocolate and let it sit there for about a minute for the heat to melt the chocolate. Then I stirred it with a spatula until it was creamy and smooth.
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Before | After |
Once the cake finished, I let it cool on a rack for a while, then sliced it into three equal sections and stacked them on top of each other and sliced around the edges so that it was even. I then spread the cooled ganache/truffle/frosting on each slice, getting a good, thick layer, then stacked them up on each other and covered that in the frosting. Because it didn't have a smooth glossy coating, I had two options. One option seems to be to dip a knife or spreader in hot water to warm up the metal, wipe the metal and then smooth it all over, but since I couldn't find my spreader (I believe I stored it away somewhere), I just took some more ganache and warmed it in the microwave and poured it over the top. Once it cooled, it has a nice glossy layer. I would plan to serve it with either ice cream, or whipped cream, some coffee and maybe a few rasberries. It's a dense chocolaty but not sweet cake.
In the last picture, you can see what I did with the cake edges. I melted more truffle/ganache and dipped the pieces and placed them onto the other side of the baking parchment paper. I was thinking of covering them in cocoa powder like truffles are coated, but somehow it just didn't feel or taste right this time. I would consider tempering chocolate (going through a heating and cooling process with plain chocolate so that when it cools it's glossy and hard) and then covering the truffles with that, leaving a nice candy-like piece of chocolate coated truffle cake.
