Love is Chocolate : Double Chocolate Walnut Circle Cake with Chocolate Ganache

Yes, love IS chocolate.

I tweaked around the recipe for Donna Hay's Standby Brownies (which I love) to make a chocolate-chocolate-chocolate cake for my friend's birthday.

This layered chocolate walnut cake is filled AND frosted with chocolate ganache, one of my favourites. Step by step instructions here:

(Please don't get shocked by the pictures. I've described the base recipe, but in the pictures I've doubled it to fit my humongous 24 cm cake tin)

FOR THE CAKE:

150 g butter

1.25 cups powdered sugar

0.50 cup cocoa powder (Chocolate - 1)

About 80 g chocolate - Or half of the 160 g Cadbury bar (Chocolate - 2)

1 tsp vanilla essence

3 eggs

0.50 cup refined flour (maida)

handful of walnuts, chopped finely

1. Preheat oven to 160 C, butter a cake tin and keep aside.

2. In a saucepan, heat the butter, sugar, cocoa powder and chocolate together till the butter melts. The chocolate should melt into the mixture.

3. Let the chocolate mixture cool and add the vanilla essence. Mix well.

4. Add eggs. Yes, 3 eggs seems like a lot, but trust me it makes all the difference. Mix everything together well.

5. Sift in the flour and lastly, fold in the chopped walnuts.

6. Pour into buttered cake tin and set in the oven. This cake cooks quite fast, keep an eye on it. Remove when skewer inserted close to middle comes out clean.

7. Let it cool. Remove from tin and layer into 2, using a string.

FOR THE CHOCOLATE GANACHE:

400 ml Cream

300 g or more chocolate (Chocolate - 3)

1. Heat the cream in a saucepan till it almost starts boiling.

2. Remove from heat and add chopped chocolate into the cream. Using a whisk, mix well together. Let it cool.

Using the almost cooled ganache, sandwich the layers of cake together, leaving enough to cover the cake.

Once the ganache cools completely, whip a little more and spread all over the cake.

Lesson to be learnt: Don't be a fool like me and double the recipe. The beautiful cake just doesn't come out like its supposed to. Which is why I've hidden it under all that child-like decoration. :P

xoxo