Last Eid al-Adha I made a chocolate cake to celebrate with the Malaysians here. When my friends asked me the name of the cake, I was dumbfounded. 'It's a chocolate cake' I replied. I find it really cheesy to name a food something out of the ordinary - e.g super duper marvelous chocolate cake,
kek coklat buaian mimpi...well you get what I mean. Hence, I called it based on the number of chocolate I used to make it - five (quintuple)! I blamed my scientific side for this.
The cake is made of chocolate sponge cake filled with chocolate hazelnut (a.k.a homemade Nutella) mousse, white chocolate mouse, dark chocolate mousse and covered with chocolate ganache. It may seem like the cake is inspired from the famous
Chocolate Indulgence cake from the Malaysian chain cake store the
Secret Recipe ; however, my friend 'A' is the one who really responsible behind this cake.
'A' is a French, and like any other French in my opinion is really particular with food and cooking. When I was baking with 'A,' I can see the huge difference in our style. I'm the
campak-campak (this is a slang in
Bahasa meaning you throw whatever you have) type of person and adjust the food based on my personal taste. My style is quick and I lack patience (but I do produce good food :D ). 'A' on the other hand really puts effort, time, energy and love when she's baking. I was impressed with her patience, and I can see why she said it takes her three hours just to bake a cake. 'A' taught me how to make mousse, which is easy to make but with a lot of care. She even gave me tips on baking that she learns from herself and family. As for that, this cake is inspired by my friend 'A' who is really dedicated in cooking/baking/whatever she is doing. I can't believe I spend more than seven hours to make and decorate this cake, which usually takes me the most two hours to make other cakes.
So yeah, if you like to make this cake remember that you need to put a lot of care (and love), but most importantly patience!
Quintuple chocolate cake
[click for printable version]
*for best result use good quality ingredients
Simple homemade Nutella
200 gm milk chocolate
200 gm ground hazelnut
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (if desired)
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
Mousses
400 ml cream - beat until soft peak forms
100 gm of homemade Nutella
100 gm white chocolate (plus 2 tablespoons milk)
100 gm dark chocolate
Chocolate sponge cake
200 gm butter
200 gm sugar
150 gm flour
50 gm cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 eggs
Chocolate ganache
100 gm dark chocolate
100 gm milk chocolate
200 ml cream
Method:
To make homemade Nutella
1. Roast the ground hazelnut on a pan until brown, set aside to room temperature.
2. In a ceramic bowl, melt the milk chocolate in a microwave (about 1 minute or more), set aside.
3. In a food processor, put the roasted hazelnut and mix until it becomes a paste. You can add oil if you want as this helps with making it becoming a paste faster. Add the melted chocolate and cocoa powder and mix until the mixture becomes smooth. Scrap of the homemade Nutella and put 100 gm in a ceramic bowl and the rest in a glass jar (you can keep this up to a month or more in a fridge)
To make chocolate mousses
1. In a ceramic bowl add the white chocolate with milk and melt them in a microwave (putting milk helps in melting the white chocolate easily - tips that I learnt from 'A'), set aside. Repeat with the dark chocolate in another separate ceramic bowl.
2. Once all the chocolates have cooled down to a room temperature, divides the whipped cream into three parts (approx. 133 gm of whipped cream for each chocolate). Put two tablespoons of the whipped cream into the melted chocolate at a time and stir until the mixture well combined (this helps in preventing the fat in the cream to curd instead of putting all the cream inside the melted chocolate) . Repeat until approx 133 gm of whipped cream is used per chocolate. Do the same thing for the rest of the chocolates.
3. Cover the mousses with plastic wrap and put them in the fridge until needed (you can do the mousses a day before to make them more stable)
To make chocolate sponge cake
1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Mix the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder in a small bowl and set aside.
2. Beat the butter and sugar on a high speed using a mixer until it becomes white and fluffy (about 10 minutes). Add one egg at a time following with a tablespoon of the flour mixture. Repeat with the rest of the eggs. Fold in the rest of the flour with a wooden spatula, and divide the cake batter into four 6' cake pans that have been oiled and lined with baking paper.
3. Bake the cake for 30 minutes or more until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.
4. Put the cake pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, invert the cake pan and take out the cake and let the cake cools down to a room temperature.
To make chocolate ganache
1. Mix everything in a ceramic bowl and melt the chocolate in a microwave, stir and set aside.
To assemble the cake
1. Level each layer of the cake with a serrated knife. Put one layer of the cake on a cake board and spread the milk chocolate hazelnut mousse, followed with another layer of the cake, white chocolate mousse, another layer of cake, dark chocolate mousse and the last layer of cake.
2. Crumb coat the cake with the leftover mouse (or chocolate ganache) and put it in the fridge for about two hours (or more) until the crumb coating is set. Cover the cake with chocolate ganache and leave it for an hour or more before serve.
Enjoy and Eid Mubarak again! :D
p,s: This cake gone in a minute during the gathering. The most well liked cake by the rest so far. Too bad I'm a vanilla person or I would I have enjoyed this cake more haha
