HCB - ChocolateTomato Cake with Mystery Ganache

This week's recipe for the Heavenly Cake Bakers, Chocolate Tomato Cake with Mystery Ganache, brought about lots of hesitation. Yes, you read the title correctly. There's tomato soup in this week's cake and frosting. Rose devised a chocolate cake recipe as well as a frosting recipe that incorporated canned Campbell's condensed tomato soup. Knowing Rose, this cake couldn't possibly be a stinker, so I went ahead and made it (although I did make just half the recipe). The batter came together quickly, using the usual two-stage mixing method. The ganache, which had some tomato soup in it as well, was a breeze too. Although, I ran out of patience after waiting 3 hours and it still wasn't at frosting consistency. So at 11pm, I gave up and did what I've done before which is to make a whipped ganache instead. You can find instructions for that in a previous post. I decided to spruce the cake up a little so I adorned the top with a chocolate drizzle and some homemade cocoa truffles.

There it is in full glory :o)

I served this cake at a dinner party tonight and it was a big hit. Everybody loved how chocolatey it was. Although I didn't tell them about the tomato, they didn't taste anything "funny". I was going to tell them afterwards, but I forgot. Will let them know when I see them again.

For step-by-step pictures and my final thoughts and tips, please continue reading.

Since I cut the recipe in half, I used two 6" pans. The batter was thick and satiny. It required a spatula to smooth it out.

Before and after smoothing

Because I wanted to make sure this cake tasted good, I made a couple of samples for us to try on Saturday, before serving them to our guests on Sunday.

My two Quality Control samples

I covered them both with the ganache, which was still runny at the time. I like how shiny the ganache is.

Quality Control sample #1

Quality Control sample #2

I frosted the cake with the whipped ganache on Saturday night.

The frosting is done. After a good night's rest, the project continued.

On Sunday afternoon, I decorated the cake with the Pirouette cookies. After I was half way done, I realized I didn't have enough cookies. If I had done my math, I would have realized that the circumference of a 6" pan is not half of that of a 9" pan (it's more like 2/3s). With only 2 hours before my guests' arrival and other things to do, I didn't have time to go to the store. My husband had just started shaving at this point, when I stormed into the bathroom to tell him about my HUGE problem (haha. Oh boy, can I exaggerate, or what? It's a good thing I can laugh about it now). He was the voice of reason and said "just space them out more". What a great idea! As I started pulling the cookies off, the ganache frosting came off with it. Uh oh. Don't panic. I "spackled" the gaps with some leftover ganache but it didn't look pretty. And now that I have more space between cookies, those imperfections will show. Hmmm... what to do? Hot water! I carefully dipped my spatula in hot water and dried it, and then smoothed out the imperfections. YES!!! It worked. I even had some cookies left in the end. I guess I could have arranged them closer together but I wasn't going to remove all those cookies again!

My friend said it looked like the cake was imprisoned, haha!

The cocoa truffles were made using a mixture of chocolate cream cheese frosting and chocolate cake scraps, from a previous cake project. I simply rolled them between the palms of my hands and rolled them in cocoa.

Ta-da. A slice of Chocolate Tomato Cake with (not-so-mystery-anymore) Ganache!

Final thoughts/tips:

• Although the cake was a bit on the chocolatey side for my husband, he liked it. He couldn't detect any tomato in it (I'm sure he would have if I had told him beforehand, haha). He gave it an 8.5 out of 10 rating, citing his biggest criticism was that the cake was too crumbly. I noticed it was crumbly too, but I really enjoyed the velvety texture once the cake enters your mouth. It just melts. The cake wasn't overly sweet, which is a big plus in my book.
• For the ganache I used half 58% Ghirardelli chocolate and half semi-sweet chocolate. It was the perfect balance for me. The tomato soup in it must have also added some sweetness to it.
• I substituted 1 oz of oil for 1 oz of butter to keep the cake moist.
• The top of the cookies were adorned with leftover Lacquer Glaze I had in my freezer.
• Everyone had a slice and one of my friends had seconds. All in all, I'd say this cake was a big hit!