Cake Madness - Day 9

Cake of the Day: Orange Chocolate Chunk Cake

I was a little desperate when I picked this cake. I've tried (in vain) to get all of my cakes planned out ahead of time so I know I always have all the ingredients I need, and have a sponsor for the cake so I'm not completely broke at the end of this month (I did eat a Fruit Roll-Up for dinner tonight, but that was more out of laziness than lack of food to be eaten). So when I realized at 3:30 that my cake sponsor for the cake I was planning on making was going to be on vacation the next day, I kind of panicked. I scoured my list of potential sponsors and cake ideas, but nothing seemed to be coming together. When I got home, I searched a few handy baking blogs, and this is the one that captured my fancy (and fit the criteria that I had everything I needed to make it (or at least close substitutions) and it wasn't crazily time-consuming). Unfortunately, I don't have those adorable little Bundt pans like Annie of Annie's Eats used: Orange Chocolate Chunk Cake. I do however have a large Bundt pan, so that had to do. The cake turned out rather short, so I guess it wasn't enough batter, but now I know. 

In other news, ganache is the bane of my existance. I could live with the cake being short and not that appealing, but the ganache was supposed to be the crowning glory of this cake, and that was not happening. How my friend made ganache in five minutes while I was struggling for two hours was beyond me (see Just A Cake, Cake Madness - Day 4). I think a lot of it had to do with my substitution for heavy cream. I had some evaporated milk I wanted to use up, and since I only have skim milk in the house, I figured this would be better in my heavy cream substitution anyways. So it was evaporated milk, water, and butter mixed with the chocolate over a double boiler to make the ganache. Well, I could see something weird happening to it, and sure enough, I "broke" the ganache. That's what it's really called. Broken. I found a fix online that told me to divide it in half, cool one half to 60 F and warm the other half to 130 F and then mix them together and that should fix it. I pulled out my trusty electronic thermometer and got to work warming and chilling and stirring until they were close to those temperatures and dumped them together. I mixed vigorously, but nothing happened . . .still broken. So I tried again, and this time got them to exactly 60 and 130 before combining . . .still broken-ish. There was just a little oil remaining on the surface, but it was bedtime, so I decided that was good enough and called it a night. In the morning, after it cooled, there were tons of white spots on my cake from the uncombined ganache . . .how frustrating. 

Partially separated, cooled ganache

Oh well, it was time to go, so a few seconds in the microwave to remelt, and tada, a beautiful, shiny, and rather good tasting ganache . . .what an experiment. Next time I will definitely have to try a different method for making ganache!

Good enough :) 

Here are the comments for today:

• Not liking this too much. OK - but chocolate was bitter (well, I did use bittersweet chocolate . . .)
• I liked the orange and chocolate flavors together. Never had a cake like that before. Really liked the chocolate frosting
• Yesterday's cake "Better than . . ." EXCELLENT (Better late than never ;))
• It was a hit. I like that you have a good variety of cake types

I think all of my work cakes are sponsored now, so that's good news. And to my surprise, a few were even sponsored by those who don't eat cake based purely on appearances, that they think this is a fun idea, or just because they are nice people . . . Thank you :)