Week 12 Chocolate Meetup

This was our last meeting during the teaching period at university – The C.A.K.E. committee decided to hold a fabulous, exciting event for the last time in the semester. The theme for the event was…well, you guessed it: CHOCOLATE!

To make the event extra special, we have decided that on top of the wonderful bakes that our members usually bring, we would also purchase several cakes from Brunetti (aka that notorious dessert cafe, that tempts you every time you walk past) as well as the newly introduced vegetarian restaurant Mantra Lounge, to accommodate the health needs of more members and make sure they have their cake and eat it too! They were a big hit, along with several other heavenly chocolate treats that some members have brought along.

We’d like to thank everyone who attended the meeting, for making it one of the most memorable events to date!

Delightful cakes baked by our beloved members:

Tim Tam Chocolate Brownie

Freddo, Mars Bars, Chocolate, Sultanas Cream Cheesecake with Walnut Base.. In short, Sinful Chocolate Cheesecake

Moist and Chocolatey Brownie. Simple but Yum!

Cocoa Cake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Giant Chocolate Chip Cookie! Who can say no to cookie?! (Renee, you’re pretty great.)

Brunetti’s Chocolate Cakes bought by the committee. They are definitely notorious for a reason – those were delicious!   

Below is the raw vanilla & chocolate cheesecake we’ve purchased from Mantra Lounge. It wasn’t disappointing at all despite the lack of dairy and gluten – perfect for meeting several dietary health requirements. The texture was extremely creamy!  

Once again, thanks to all of our members that have spent their time attending our last event for the semester! We hope that everyone enjoyed the wonderful afternoon and went home with a satisfying sweet tooth!

Mmm Chocolate Cake

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey  everyone, so this is the cake I made for the Welcome Back event this semester. I pretty much just used what I had in my baking friendly home and it wasn’t too hard to whip up quickly.

INGREDIENTS

Chocolate cake

190g dark chocolate

125g soft unsalted butter

125g dark brown sugar

2 egg yolks

40g almond meal

2 egg whites

40g caster sugar

And the chocolate ganache is at the bottom of the page.

METHOD

Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Line a 20cm cake tin with baking paper. (I actually buttered the sides of the tin and let me tell you, bad mistake. I almost tore my whole cake apart as I was taking it out of the tin. So I recommend baking paper)

Chocolate cake

1. Finely chop up the chocolate & set aside. This took me ages, but I was watching Masterchef at the same time 🙂

2. Beat the unsalted butter until smooth in another bowl.

3. Add the dark brown sugar into the butter & beat until creamy.

4. Blend in the egg yolks, then chopped chocolate and almond meal. Set the mixture aside.

5. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until it forms soft peaks. Then add in little amounts of sugar at a time while still whisking until all the sugar is used and stiff peaks form.

6. Whisk 1/3 of the egg white mixture into the chocolate mixture to lighten it. Then carefully fold in the rest of the egg white mixture in 2 separate batches. Don’t worry if the batter looks lumpy, so did mine.

7. Pour the batter into the cake tin & bake for ~40mins or until a knife (or in my case a chopstick) comes out clean. Be careful not to over bake the cake or it will become dry. And no one likes dry cake.

8. Let it cool for at least 2 hours before turning the cake out onto a rack. The top of the cake may appear lumpy due to the chopped chocolate. You can choose to either cut the top off to even it out. Or do what I did and turn the cake upside down to leave a brilliantly smooth surface to put the ganache on.

Chocolate ganache

200g dark chocolate

200g full cream

When making ganache, I usually stick by the rule 1 part cream to 1 part dark chocolate.

Chop the chocolate into pieces (the smaller they are, the easier to melt) & put in a mixing bowl.

Then heated up my cream in a saucepan until a bit of steam starts coming off it. Pour the hot cream into the chocolate and whisk quickly until all the chocolate has mixed smoothly into the cream.

Let it cool to room temperature, or if you’re impatient like me, pop it in the fridge and just check on it every so often until it reaches the thickness you want to spread it on the cake.

Then just decorate with melted white chocolate and voila!