Let Them Eat Cake!

I know I still haven’t posted the long-promised sticky bun recipe, but I’m gonna skip that for now and go straight to some fantastic CAKE.

David’s cake request for the past 3 or so years in a row now has been a chocolate cake with FRESH strawberries incorporated somehow.  My first several attempts were not that great.  It’s hard to put fresh strawberries into baked goods!

But this year I hit the jackpot, my friends.  I combined elements from several different cakes that I found intriguing/delectable.  I made a chocolate genoise cake, with a mascarpone cream and fresh strawberry filling, topped with a white chocolate icing.  Then I went ahead and used fresh chocolate covered strawberries and a dark chocolate ganache to decorate it.  Hellooooo, little slices of heaven!

I had never had mascarpone anything before, but it sounded pretty amazing and I have been into trying new things lately.  Boy am I glad I did!  I don’t know how to describe it exactly…maybe something like fresh whipped cream meets sour cream and cream cheese.  Kind of.  It’s a very delicate, fresh taste.  You just gotta try it yourself to see what the heck I’m talking about.

And after making Dave’s cake, I had plenty of mascarpone cream and chocolate ganache leftover, as well as some of the white chocolate icing, so today I went ahead and used my favorite mocha cupcake recipe to make MORE fabulous treats.  I think I like the cupcakes even better than the cake!  The cake was VERY good, but the white chocolate icing and the fresh strawberries in the filling don’t do well after a day or two.  That cake is made to be eaten same-day.

So here’s some recipes for ya:

David’s Chocolate Genoise Strawberry Mascarpone Cream and White Chocolate Icing Cake

(yes, I am aware I will need to come up with a shorter title for that one.  Later, my friends…later.)

Le Cake!

Chocolate Genoise Cake Ingredients:

-3 tbsp melted unsalted butter

–1 tsp vanilla extract

-1/2 cup cake flour

-1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

-4 large eggs

-2/3 cup white sugar

Cake Directions:

-Preheat oven to 350°

-Spray 9″ round pan and line bottom with parchment paper.

-In small bowl, combine butter and vanilla

-In medium bowl, sift flour and cocoa (yes, I did actually sift it this time.  It’s not much flour, the sifting goes quickly!)

-In large bowl, whisk eggs and sugar.  Place over saucepan of simmering water and whisk constantly until lukewarm.  Remove from heat and beat on high until mixture has cooled, tripled in volume and looks like softly whipped cream (approximately 5 minutes)

-Sift 1/3 of flour mixture over whipped eggs and gently fold in.  Repeat until all flour is folded in. (No, I did not sift it a second time.)

-Take 1 cup of batter and fold into butter mixture.

-Fold butter into batter and pour into prepared cake pan.  Bake approximately 20-25 minutes.

Mascarpone Cream Filling Ingredients:

-1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream

-2/3 cup granulated sugar, separated

-8oz mascarpone cheese

-1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Filling Directions:

-In a chilled bowl, with chilled beaters, beat whipping cream and 1/3 cup sugar until stiff peaks form.

-In separate bowl, cream mascarpone cheese, 1/3 cup sugar and vanilla until creamy.  Combine with whipped cream.

Cake, sliced in half, with mascarpone filling topped with sliced strawberries. Then I put more filling on the other half of the cake, slapped the two halves together and iced the whole thing. Got it??

White Chocolate Icing Ingredients:

-3/4 cup white chocolate, melted over low heat

-3 tbsp flour

-1 cup milk

-1 cup sugar (I think they meant granulated sugar.  I started creaming the butter with granulated sugar and then freaked out because aren’t you always supposed to use powdered sugar for icing?  So I threw it away and started over with powdered.  It worked great with powdered sugar, but I have since found several similar icing recipes that use granulated sugar.  So it’s your call.  I can vouch that powdered sugar works….others say granulated is amazing in this recipe.)

-1 cup butter

-1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Icing Directions:

-Stir flour into melted chocolate.  Add milk gradually and blend well.  Cook over medium heat until very thick. (This takes a long time.  Like maybe 15 minutes or so.  Have patience and stir well!)

-Cool completely.

-Beat sugar, butter and vanilla until light and fluffy.

-Gradually add chocolate mixture and beat until consistency of whipped cream.

This cake did not last long! Yum!

As I mentioned before, I had plenty of leftover mascarpone cream, icing, and chocolate ganache so today I made my favorite mocha cupcakes with them!

You can find the recipe for the mocha cupcakes here.

Basically, I used a spoon to make a hollow in the cupcakes, like so:

Makin' room for some filling!

and then I put my leftover mascarpone cream in a ziploc with the end cut off and filled the hollows with deliciousness.  Then I put some of the cupcake back over the filling, like this:

Cupcake caps!

And then I microwaved my leftover ganache, and spread it over as many cupcakes as I could.  When I ran out of that, I made a vanilla sugar cookie icing out of sugar water and powdered sugar, and used it on the rest of the cupcakes, so I ended up with these:

Not so pretty, but oh, SO good!

I thought that I loved these mocha cupcakes with the white chocolate icing, but I think I love them even more with the mascarpone filling and dark chocolate ganache. They. Are.  Awe.some!

Happy baking,

Becki