Notice that I said "airy" and "summer-y." Those things are true, but I will not say that this cake is "light." Calorie-wise, I'm pretty sure that this is sinful as all get-out. I will not be calculating the calorie count, because: duh. This was called "Hazelnut Mocha Fudge Layer Cake"--and not "healthy dessert"--for a reason.
The original recipe for the cake, filling, and frosting were all from Betty Crocker's Ultimate Cake Mix Cookbook, © General Mills, Inc. (2002). Cake and filling were together and they called it Mocha Mousse Cake (no hazelnut in their version). The recipe below includes my paraphrasing/revisions, as well as my comments and additions.
Cake:
1 package Betty Crocker SuperMoist chocolate fudge cake mix (I used triple fudge, instead. Why use regular fudge, when you can use triple fudge?)
1 1 /3 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon coffee liqueur or prepared coffee (I used fairly strongly brewed hazelnut coffee)
4 eggs
- Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour bottoms and sides of 3 round cake pans. I only have 2 round cake pans, so I greased and floured those.
- Beat cake mix, water, oil, coffee, and eggs in a large bowl on low speed for 1 minute. I stirred mine with a spoon until moistened and then used a whisk to beat it by hand for about 2 minutes. That worked great!
- Pour about 1 1/2 cups of batter into each pan. If baking only 2 pans at a time, refrigerate remaining batter until ready to use.
- Bake about 20 minutes or until toothpick/cake tester inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool at least 10 minutes before running knife around edges to loosen and removing cake from pans. Then I cleaned one pan, greased/floured it, and baked the last layer using the batter in the fridge.
- Let layers cool COMPLETELY.
Mousse:
3/4 cup heavy whipping cream, divided (I actually used 1 cup and it turned out great--see below)
2 Tablespoons sugar
1/3 coffee liqueur or prepared coffee (again, I used fairly strongly brewed hazelnut coffee)
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips (6 oz is half a bag of chips, but I used slightly more. Probably more like between 7 and 8 ounces)
2 teaspoons vanilla (I used double-strength Penzey's vanilla. Thanks, Emily, for this delicious addition to my baking arsenal!)
- Mix 1/4 cup cream, sugar, and coffee in a medium saucepan. Cook over a medium heat, stirring constantly, until sugar dissolved and mixture just starts to simmer.
- Remove from heat and add chocolate chips. Stir until chips are melted.
- Add vanilla and stir.
- Let cool to room temperature but do not refrigerate
- Put a metal mixing bowl in the refrigerator or freezer to chill. I used the mixing bowl for my Kitchen Aid stand mixer.
- When chocolate mixture is cool, beat remaining cream (1/2 cup if you wanna follow Betty's instructions or 3/4 cup if you are me and screw up a bit) in the chilled bowl on high speed until soft peaks form.
- Fold in chocolate mixture. I then beat the mixture a bit more, until there soft to medium peaks formed.
- Cover and refrigerate at least 30 minutes.
Frosting:
1 cup heavy whipping cream
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 Dutch process baking cocoa (I actually used Hershey's unsweetened baking cocoa, so it probably turned out a little lighter)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla (again, I used double-strength Penzey's vanilla)
- Chill metal mixing bowl.
- Beat all ingredients with electric mixer on high speed until soft peaks form. I used my stand mixer again, and again, went for soft-to-medium peaks. Be sure to scrape the bowl fairly often, so that the cocoa gets nicely mixed in.
- Refrigerate until use.
Chocolate Shavings:
- Find a chocolate bar. Maybe you have one in your fridge, or on your counter, or--if you are desperate--you could always buy one at a store. I used a Scharffen Berger semi-sweet (62%) chocolate bar, because, yeah, I had one in my fridge.
- If the chocolate is super-cold--like if it just came out of the fridge, for example--let it come to room temperature.
- Use a vegetable peeler to take shavings off. (If you want actual chocolate curls, go for it. The chocolate will probably have to be a bit warmer/softer and it'll be easier if using a bar o' chocolate that is thicker than a standard eating bar.)
Nutella:
- Erm....Buy a container of Nutella? I only used about 1/3 of a small jar, so if you are person who has Nutella around your house already, you should be fine.
Assembly:
- Place one cake layer on plate/whatever is holding the cake.
- Spread a thin layer of Nutella on the cake layer
- Spread a bit less than half of the Mousse on top of the Nutella
- Place 2nd cake layer
- Spread Nutella and most of the remaining Mousse
- Place 3rd cake layer
- Frost sides and top with Whipped Cream Frosting
- Refrigerate cake for at least 2 hours before serving
- Sprinkle chocolate shavings on top of the cake before cutting/serving (I also think toasted, chopped hazelnuts would be awesome on top, but I didn't have any of those. They seem sort of winter-like, anyway, though.)
- Store cake in the fridge. Probably covered, if you can manage it.
So, if you were doing the math in that assembly, you noticed that I had some mousse left when I did my layers. I didn't want the mousse layers to be so thick that the cake started sliding or shifting, so I used a bit less. But, no worries, the left-over was amazing on strawberries!
So, that's it. Nothing was terribly hard, but I will admit that a stand mixer makes whipping cream super-easy. The main thing with this recipe/combo of recipes seems to be time management. The key for me was making sure everything was done in the right order, at the right time, so that the components had a chance to completely cool when appropriate.
Questions, comments, etc.? Let me know!
Oh, yes. I almost forgot the rest of the photographic evidence. It was just slightly the worse for wear after a car trip to Savage, but I think it still looked great before it was cut. Afterwards, the layers pretty much spoke for themselves!
No comments:
Post a Comment