Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Cake Alaska

Cake Alaska with Chocolate Ganache
Some recipes are your all time favourite, and this is mine! Its my midnight treat. Cake Alaska is a must in summers, and if you haven't ever tried it, well then, you're missing a lot. I'm not completely following the traditional recipe of flaming Alaska cake or baking ice cream filled chocolate cake at 300degrees, my recipe is very simple yet classic. I skipped the meringue and added ganache to the recipe, so here's it.



Ingredients:
- 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons sugar (icing sugar for best results)
- 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
- 3/4 plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 2 large eggs
- 1 cup milk
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons boiling water

DIRECTIONS:
Step #1: Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Step #2: Whisk all the dry ingredients of the cake, in a large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla and beat with an electric mixture on low speed for about 2 minutes, and on high speed for about 3 minutes.

Step #3: Whisk in the boiling water. Batter must be very thin and runny so do not worry. That's exactly what it's suppose to be like.
Step #4: pour in two equal sized round cake pans and bake for about 45 minutes, or more if needed.
Step#5: When baked, take the cake out and leave to cool for about 5 minutes. Take the cake out of the pans and on two cake plates. Let cool.
Step #6: Cut out a smaller circle from the middle of one cake, you can use a round cookie shape to cut the cake out.
Step #7: fill the empty round space with ice cream, vanilla. 
Step #8: Layer this cake with the other one and cover your cake with Chocolate ganache.
Step #9: You can make your ganache with heating one cup heavy cream over low heat and melting 400 grams of chocolate (milk or dark) in it till the mixture is smooth and shiny. Put it in the refrigerator till its cool and thick enough. You can beat the ganache on max speed to get the desired thickness.

Cover the cake with ganache, i like to keep my ganache messy and more like an old fashioned home made style. My ganache is not really thick, its shiny and smooth. You can use Chocolate Buttercream instead of the ganache, but i prefer ganache, it give more luxury feel to the cake. 

Enjoy!