For Mr Magic Muscles Mike’s birthday! One of my most trustworthy and quietly gentle, yet super fun, friend I’ve met at medical school, and the parties that he hosts are indeed legendary. Never a boring time at his place and he always guarantees everyone is having a good time. And not to mention the cocktails he makes for us! We served this cake outdoors – we let it sit around an hour out of the fridge, and the rum raisin cream came to the perfect consistency with the cool evening weather. I had brushed on extra rum syrup on each cake layer, so with the cream it blended together really nicely.
Serve with.. More celebratory birthday drinks (Magic Mike give us an ideal drink pairing)!
| Rum Raisin Chocolate Cake adapted from Foodie Baker
Chocolate Genoise (1.5x original recipe) 45 grams plain flour Chocolate Ganache 100 ml hot thickened cream Rum Raisin Buttercream (Flour buttercream) from Haniela’s Flour buttercream Tips by Serious Eats 2 1/2 cup milk 100 grams raisins (soak overnight in rum) |
To make Chocolate Genoise
Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Grease a 8-inch baking tin and line the bottom with parchment paper. Sift the flour and cocoa powder together. Place the egg with sugar and whisk immediately until combined. Hold the mixing bowl over medium-low heat and whisk constantly, to bring up the temperature until its like baby’s milk – warm but not hot. The mixture would be foamy. Transfer the mixture in the pot into a mixing bowl and whisk it with a hand-held electric mixer on high speed until the bubbles start to disappear. The mixture will triple in volume. Turn the mixer down to low and whisk it for at least 1 minute, to stabilize the air bubbles in the cake batter. The cake batter will leave a trail when you lift up the beaters and will sink and merge back slowly into the batter. Sift in half of the flour mixture and gently fold it in until almost all are combined. Sift in the remaining half of the flour mixture and fold until no flour pockets are visible. Do not over-mix. Add one-third of the cake batter into the hot, melted butter. Use a smaller spatula and fold the butter into the cake batter thoroughly. Pour the butter-mixed batter back into the rest of the cake batter and fold in gently. Transfer the cake batter into the baking tin. Tilt the tin so the batter spreads out evenly and drop it two to three times on the counter-top to burst the uneven air bubbles. Bake in the middle rack for 15 to 20 minutes until the cake springs back when touched gently and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Let the cake cool completely in the tin before decorating. To make Chocolate Ganache (design link is at here) Heat up thickened cream until almost at boiling point, top over chocolate buttons. Let sit until melted, stir and reserve for future use. Decorated similarly to here. Rum Raisin Buttercream (Flour buttercream) Whisk flour into about 1 cup milk, until smooth. Add remaining milk. Cook on medium high heat until pudding like texture, cook for 2 minutes, remove from the heat. Strain though fine mesh sieve. Cover with plastic wrap and let cool until room temperature. Beat room temperature butter, add powdered sugar, beat until smooth, gradually add flour pudding. Beat until fluffy and creamy. Beat in vanilla bean paste. Can be made ahead of time, store in the fridge, re-beat if necessary, let come to room temperature before whipping. To assemble cake To assemble the cake, place the first cake layer on a small cake platter, pipe on half of the filling, then place another cake layer on top. Pipe on the rest of the filling, and top the cake with the final cake layer. Place it in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight, and bring to room temperature 1 hour before serving |
My Dose of Sugar 