Well, as promised, here is the New Years cake my mum and I baked yesterday. My mom goes extremely extravagant at New Years with food, so we scheduled the baking of the cake for Wednesday evening.
This recipe is a family tradition that was given to us from a family friend a while back. It's a chocolate and vanilla layered cake with chocolate ganache. A very simple recipe indeed, but simply delicious!
So, we started with the actually cake itself. We separated the egg yolks and whites, putting the yolks in a little bowl, and the whites in the mixing bowl. My mom explained to me that this is done to get a more spongy feel from the cake.
We added flour to it, and sugar, as well as some other ingredients that are required for the recipe, and then mixed the yolks back in. The batter was then poured into a sprinform pan. We put this in the oven for 30 minutes!
While the cake was baking, we started on the ganache. Romanian ganache is different than the ones found in baking books here because instead of heavy cream, it calls for butter. So, we set the butter aside to warm a bit, and we mixed the water and cocoa and some different flavours in a saucepan, and heat it up until boiling point. Then, we slowly poured this into the bowl with the butter. My mom said, "never pour it all at once. Pour it little by little, and stir" In our Romanian version of the ganache, 5-6 egg yolks are added to the ganache. No salmonella poisoning, don't worry, the heat of the hot cocoa is just enough for it to be safe!
After this, we put the hot ganache mixture into the fridge to cool down.
We also took out the cake from the oven.
When it was all cooled down, we cut of the top of the cake because it had formed a bit of an arched shape. Then, we cut it into three equal pieces.
What we then do is in a little bowl, mix some water with rum extract. Then, you pour this with a teaspoon all over each piece. After pouring the first one, you then spread some of the ganache all over. We continue to do this until the top.
Then you spread the ganache all over the outside of the cake, add decorations, and you're done!
The cake does look a little flat in the pictures, but it isn't like that in real life.
Unfortunately, I can't provide the recipe for you, because it remains in the family as a family recipe, but I will have other recipes soon enough!
Enjoy, and Happy New Year! 2010
