HCB - Double Chocolate Valentine

This week's recipe for the Heavenly Cake Bakers is the Double Chocolate Valentine Cake. As soon as this chocolate cake comes out of the oven, you poke holes into it and brush with ganache. And I don't mean a few strokes of ganache. A whole cup's worth of ganache! It doesn't get much chocolatier than this.

Heart-shaped double chocolate cake, with a basket weave decoration, a rope top-border, and a shell border at the bottom.

Making the cake was a breeze. And so was the ganache. While I was brushing the ganache onto the cake, I had a flashback to the Tres Leches Cake. Today's cake was like a chocolate version of the Tres Leches Cake. The cake happily absorbed the creamy ganache.

Scraping batter into the pan.

Use cake strips on the heart-shaped pan.

Poke holes into the cake as soon as it comes out of the oven so it can start receiving the ganache.

When all sides are brushed with the ganache, let the cake sit so the ganache can firm up.

In the book, Rose decorated the cake with fresh raspberries which she glazed with a currant jelly to give them shine. With raspberries not being in season right now, I decided to make a raspberry mousse using frozen raspberries (which taste pretty decent as they're picked when they're ripe and flash frozen). The texture of the raspberry mousse is light and fluffy, with a nice raspberry flavor without being too sweet.

Raspberry Mousse:
(my original recipe)
1/8 cup cold water
1/2 Tbsp gelatin powder
3/4 cup frozen raspberries, thawed, juices included
1/3 cup sugar
1 Tbsp grape jelly, to intensify the color of the mousse (optional)
1 1/4 cup heavy cream

• Bloom gelatin in water for 5 min.
• Mash the thawed raspberries with the back of a spoon.
• Combine mashed raspberries, sugar, grape jelly, and gelatin mixture in a small sauce pan. Heat over low-medium heat until hot to the touch, stirring frequently. Do not bring to a boil! Strain it if you don't like seeds. Cool to room temperature (20-30 min).
  
• Whip the cream until stiff peaks form. Gently fold it into the raspberry mixture. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
• Fill a piping bag with raspberry mousse and decorate your cake of choice. This mousse works great as a filling too.
• Leftover mousse freezes really well. Put leftover mousse in a ziploc bag, date it and freeze it. When needed, thaw the mousse in the fridge overnight.

The cake is now ready to eat.

May I present to you: a slice of super-chocolatey goodness! Can you see three vertical puddles of chocolate ganache at the bottom of the slice? That's what I'm talking about!!

Final thoughts/tips:

• Although hubby and I found the cake a tad dry, we both liked it. Hubby liked it a bit less than I did, citing that the cake was a bit "too chocolatey". This translates to, the bitterness of the chocolate significantly decreased the sweetness of the cake. I personally don't mind that aspect so I enjoyed it. The mousse added a nice flavor and texture contrast. Hubby rated this cake: 7.5 out of 10.
  
• I made a couple changes to the recipe. I used 4 oz of butter and 1 oz of canola oil because I only had 1 stick of butter in the fridge (the rest was frozen). Knowing that hubby wouldn't like 60% chocolate in the ganache, I used semi-sweet chocolate instead. Good thing I did, otherwise he might not have liked it at all.