When KJ suggested a potluck get-together for us ex-RJC classmates at JY’s place, I was excited for two reasons. The first being the prospect of having tea with old friends at JY’s swanky apartment, the second being an excuse to bake something before I run completely out of energy.

I was certain that my contribution would be some sort of dessert. Macarons would be too much work and muffins, cupcakes or brownies would be too boring, so I settled on a chocolate cake recipe that I’d already tried out on several occasions.

The devil’s food cake was easily baked in the evening before. I was pretty sure that making the chocolate ganache would be a breeze to and I left it to the morning before the tea party. That was until I weighed the chocolate on my trusty digital kitchen scales and realised just how much 24 oz of chocolate was.

Chopping chocolate to a degree fine enough for ganache has never been an activity that I look forward to and 24 oz of chocolate was daunting. After the 2nd block of chocolate, I threw in the towel and decided to just cut the chocolate into smaller blocks, melt the blocks in a bain-marie and add the hot cream.

The ganache turned out fine and I’ll probably be using this method for larger quantities of chocolate in the future. I was slightly concerned that the whipped ganache would be difficult to use given the really hot weather on that day, but everything went well.

Most importantly, my friends enjoyed the cake (at least I hope they weren’t just being polite ) and we had a great time catching up.

The recipe for this cake, courtesy of MarthaStewart.com, can be found here. Note: I only covered the cake with the whipped ganache and left out the last layer of ganache glaze. 2/3 of the ganache recipe is more than sufficient for the entire cake, including the ganache glaze.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 30th, 2010 at 9:51 am and is filed under Cakes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.