Dark Chocolate Ganache Pretzel Tart

This recipe is so easy and delicious, and it's done in no time! You combine the ingredients for the crust, then you bake the crust, cool the crust while you're making the ganache filling, pour the ganache into the cooled crust, and then into the fridge it goes.

A slice of chocolate heaven!

Dark Chocolate Ganache Pretzel Tart

TBB - Chocolate Cuddle Cake

Rose's Alpha Bakers embarked on a wonderful chocolate chiffon cake this week with caramel whipped cream and chocolate ganache. Also known as Chocolate Cuddle Cake. I was a bit in a hurry so I ended up taking some shortcuts: I skipped the ganache and I used my own recipe for the caramel whipped cream. The cake itself I didn't make any changes to, except I baked it in a 2-piece tube pan.

The cake was served at a dinner party at our house. It was a huge hit. Everybody had seconds and left my house happy :o) I even got a birthday cake request for this cake!

(Half naked) Chocolate Cuddle Cake

TBB - The Ischler

The Ischler that almost never was. It was this week's baking challenge for Rose's Alpha Bakers. Such bad timing for me! I've been battling a really nasty cold all of last week, I really dislike roll-out cookies, and I dislike sandwich cookies even more because for the amount of work you put in, you're only getting half the number of cookies. I deliberated skipping this week's challenge. Then my brain went into problem solving mode: "are there any kind of shortcuts that can be made?". Well, I could make half the recipe, skip any kind of fruit, use the chocolate ganache leftover from the Eclairs I made recently, and use almond meal from the freezer so I wouldn't have to mess with the extra steps of finely chopping the almonds (Trader Joe's sells unblanched almond meal). And so, my "quick(er)" version of The Ischler was born :o)

Ganache dipped Ischler with toasted and chopped almonds

And then I went overboard with shapes, dipping, and chopped almonds.

Did I mention overboard? It did look pretty though!

ABC - Dark Chocolate Eclairs

This is somewhat of a bittersweet blog post. Not only is it the last ABC blog post of this year, it's also the last recipes post from this year's recipe source, King Arthur Flour. For this occasion, I chose something special, a French pastry called Eclair. These pastries are so versatile. After they're baked, they can be filled with all sorts of flavored pastry creams, or simply whipped cream.

King Arthur Flour has the recipe on their website as well as step-by-step pictures for making the pastry.

Eclairs and cream puffs filled with dark chocolate pastry cream and chocolate glaze

As I mentioned in my last blog post, starting January 2015, we will be baking recipes from the wonderful blog, Scientifically Sweet, written by food scientist Christina Marsigliese. I am very much looking forward to that :o)

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

ABC - Classic Fruit Tart

For this month's ABC, we're baking the Classic Fruit Tart from The Weekend Baker by Abby Dodge. I found some really good raspberries at the store so that's what I used. Although fruit tarts always look so pretty and appetizing, they always seemed so fussy. I learned with this recipe that that's not the case at all. There might be a few components to it but Abby breaks them down into manageable steps that you can do over the course of 2 or more days. I had some leftover ganache to decorate the tart. I mean, who doesn't love raspberries and chocolate? :o)

Raspberry Tart with Pastry Cream and Chocolate Ganache

A slice of yummy fruity goodness! :o)

If you would like to join the ABC baking club, please email me at HanaasKitchen [at] live [dot] com. Please find more details about our baking club on the ABC blog.

HCB - Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache

Not too long ago, the Heavenly Cake Bakers baked the Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache. Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to bake along that week so I postponed it to this week's Free Choice. The advantage is that you get to read everyone's experience/likes/dislikes. Those that followed the recipe in the book, said that the cake was too crumbly. While those that followed the alternative mixing instructions on Rose's blog said the cake was too dense. My mission: figure out a way to make a good "in-between" cake. Easier said than done but I thought I'd give it a try.

Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache

HCB - Chocolate Genoise with Ganache Glaze (rewind)

Before I begin my HCB post, I have something fun and exciting to share: my State Fair baking adventure of this past summer is featured on Rose's blog alongside Woody's first State Fair entry!!!! Thank you Rose and Woody for your kind words about my baking. You can read all about it HERE.

This week's cake for the Heavenly Cake Bakers to bake is the Chocolate Velvet Fudge Cake. Almost exactly a year ago to the day, I made this cake as part of a super awesome Volcano Cake for a close friend's daughter's 11th birthday. Click HERE to check it out!! So this week, I opted to do a rewind and make the Chocolate Genoise that the HCB-ers made a couple weeks ago. I used regular ganache instead of the prescribed Peanut Butter Ganache. The other change I made is substitute an equal amount by weight of corn starch for the flour and I threw in a handful of toasted almonds, which I chopped finely in the food processor. My inspiration for this change comes from Hector. A while back, he mentioned experimenting with corn starch in the Genoise to make the cake gluten-free. His reasoning for this change is that a Genoise gets its structure from the egg foam and not as much from the proteins in the flour.

I used my standby recipe for syrup which consists of sugar, water and orange juice. The cake's texture is super soft. It's melt-in-your-mouth tender. I thought it was moist enough for a Genoise (I used about 1/2 cup of syrup). The chocolate flavor was just right and the ganache was very smooth. Unfortunately, the cake formed a thin layer of dense and rubbery mass at the bottom, which I had to cut off prior to serving the cake. Other than that, the cake was fine, and I would call this a successful gluten-free experiment.

HCB - Chocolate Layer Cake with (Whipped) Caramel Ganache & Plum-Blueberry Upside Down Torte

Earlier this month, the Heavenly Cake Bakers made the Plum-Blueberry Upside Down Torte. Although I baked it at the time, I didn't get a chance to post it, so here it is today. This week's HCB recipe is the Chocolate Layer Cake with Caramel Ganache. I was very excited about this cake, especially the ganache. My fellow blogger, Leslie of Lethally Delicious, has given it rave reviews and this lady knows her chocolate!!! :o)

Chocolate Layer Cake with Whipped Caramel Ganache

Plum-Blueberry Upside Down Torte

How did we like these cakes? Please continue reading. I also have step-by-step pictures.