Another Birthday Post :)

It's another birthday post again...yeah it's our dear Shunmei here. :) How time flies...my first official post at Baking Cottage was her birthday post as well. So, this would also mark my blog's first anniversary! Baking Cottage's birthday is coming! Hehe... Well, I thought of baking a cake to celebrate this occasion, if time and energy permits. *lazy* :P
I like the overall presentation of this cake, simple and nothing elaborate but chocolatety. This wasn't my initial plan actually. My plan was to bake a black forest cake. Somehow, I overwhipped the whipping cream and the cream cuddled, so I changed my plan and made a chocolate ganache cake instead, since the cake was already baked that time and all I have with me was chocolate bars and the dark cherries.

Cake was sliced into three layers, layers brushed with cherry syrup, sandwiched with a simple ground almond-ganache and dark cherries in between, and finally covered with a layer of chocolate glaze. The glaze, when set was shiny because of glucose added to it. The chocolate sponge recipe was quite moist and soft, unlike some which were dry. The recipe was shared by my sister-in-law who attended some baking workshop before and here I am to share with you.

Chocolate Sponge Cake

Ingredients:

4 eggs
100g sugar
90g plain flour
10g cocoa powder
1/4 tsp baking powder
80-100g melted butter

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160°C.
2. Grease and line a 9-inch round baking tin.
3. Whisk eggs and sugar at maximum speed until light and creamy.
4. Fold in sifted flour, cocoa powder and baking powder, a little at a time.
5. Add melted butter and mix well.
6. Pour into baking tin and bake for about 25-30 minutes.
7. Turn out from tin and leave till cool before frosting.

Shiny Chocolate Glaze (Recipe from Phoon Huat & Co)

Ingredients:

250ml fresh milk
250g fresh whipping cream
50g glucose (can be found in baking supply stores - mine was from "redman")
1000g dark chocolate

Method:

Boil the milk, cream and glucose, then add in dark chocolate and stir till dissolve.

Note: I halved the recipe for chocolate sponge, and used only 1/10 of the recipe for the glaze as it's way too much. Do adjust your recipe accordingly.

We gave Shunmei a treat at this German restaurant - Brotzeit at Vivocity. The specialty for the day was pork knuckles! It was known to ladies to have lots of collagen who is good for our skin but we were just not adventurous enough to try it. We tried a a sampler of mixed sashimi, sausages, salads. The food were rather new to us as we've not tried German-styled cuisine before though we weren't that filling after the meal. I'm glad that xian mentioned that my chocolate cake completed the meal. :D

I wish I could upload more photos but blogger just don't allow me. In fact it took me days to get all these up, thus I have lesser postings this month. I'll try to get all my post up soon ;)