Recipe for the “Chocolate mint overload for lady DBS” cake

I’m bad at buying presents. I prefer to know what people need or like, and then get them something useful rather then going with something that I might like. Well, actually, if I really like it that most likely means it’s totally skewed and not good for regular people. 😀

Living with Dina means I know her better, but as well that I’m buying things whenever and then usually when the birthday is approaching, I’m stuck with nothing “special”. Well, I’ve finally managed to surprise her and get her something that she mentioned just “by the way”, while she had no idea what she’s getting.

Along the way, teasing each other, she asked me “Will I ever get a cake for birthday”. And yet again – I’m not buying “ordinary” cakes. I took parts from three well known sweets containing Dina’s favourite ingredients – namely “Marble cake”, “Pesak Torta” (Serbian “sand cake”) and “After eight”, and I’ve decided to build my own cake. It’s called “Chocolate mint overload for lady DBS” cake.

And here’s the recipe with a few photos. 🙂

Ingredients and the recipe:

You’ll need the following:

Mint extract
200 ml Heavy Cream
200 grams Cooking Chocolate

For the base layer and inner parts:
300 grams of plain flour
200 grams of regular sugar (granulated)
25 grams of cocoa powder
Baking powder (10 grams, 1 small bag)
400 ml of yoghurt
3 eggs
100 ml of oil
Chocolate chips

Mix flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, then add eggs, yoghurt and the oil and make one nice batter.

I was very lucky that day, as all the eggs from the batch I got were twins. 🙂

Now, for the purposes of my experiment, I’ve done all this without adding cocoa powder immediately. I’ve mixed the batter and split it in two equal portions, and then added the cocoa powder in one, and a few drops of mint and chocolate chips in the other. I needed black and white parts, where black would be the bottom layer.

I’ve bought some “the best” super concentrated mint extract, so I was not so sure what I’m doing, and for the whole cake I literally spent 6 drops of it. When I compared the quantities later on, it seemed that I used nothing, but trust me, the cake was minted (pun intended). 🙂

I’ve put the black batter into rounded cake tin, and I’ve spread the whitie into a thin rectangle shaped baking tray.

While these two were in the oven, around 20-25 minutes each, I was preparing the coconut cream.

For the cream you’ll need:

0.5 l milk
1 vanilla pudding (if nowhere else, available in Polish / Croatian stores)
200 gr of regular sugar
300 gr of coconut flour (coconut flakes)

Mix the pudding powder with 150 ml of milk, and the rest of the milk and sugar bring almost to the boil, but don’t let it boil. When the sweetened milk is warm, add dissolved pudding powder and finish the pudding (stir for 2-3 minutes, and that’s it.) Let this cool down a bit, then add all the coconut flour and mix it well to get the thick cream.

While this is cooling down, cut the white layer of previously baked sponge into squares.

Now, you finally have almost all the ingredients for the “Chocolate mint overload for lady DBS”. 🙂

We just need to shape the cake, and prepare the final layer.

On top of black layer spread 1/3 of the coconut pudding cream. Stick squares of white sponge as random as possible, preferably vertically and in weird angles into the cream. Now fill in the spaces between the sponge bricks with the 1/3 of the coconut pudding cream, and cover the cake with the remaining third.

This should cool down, I’ve actually leave this in the fridge for a couple of hours, than later in the evening I’ve finished the cake.

Ingredients for the ganache:
200 grams of dark chocolate
200 ml of heavy cream

To finish it, I’ve prepared a lovely ganache. To get the best possible ganache, I’ve bought some extra dark Belgian cooking chocolate buttons, a full kilo bag. One of the best on the market, but any good dark chocolate will do. (I’ve bought it only to say “I bough a kilo of chocolate”, that was the main reason. 😀 )

Warm up heavy cream and melt 200 grams of chocolate in it, and of course, and a few more drops of mint in it and stir it until you get nice thick chocolate ganache.

Spread it on top of the cake, and let that cool down overnight. Since I had a bit of extra sponge, coconut cream and ganache, I prepared a desert for the evening. 🙂

And that was it, my chocolate cake was finished!

I’ve decorated it properly, as you can see, and the cake was apparently great. 🙂

Hopefully, at least someone will try to make it, and will let me know if you liked it. 🙂

Till the next one…

Be sweet, be minted. 🙂

Balky