A Chocolate Fudge Cake laced with Frangelico.
JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro Nilsson © 2011
It is during the last weeks of July to mid-August in the southwest of Sweden that people can experience the full warmth of the summer sun. The sea water is warm and the hours of daylight stretches long into the late evenings and gives enough light to go for that evening swim, just before sunset around half past nine in the evening.
Summer sunset in the garden, in good company and the perfect setting for that Frangelico Chocolate Fudge Cake!
These weeks are certainly one of the best times in the year to entertain guests and take meandering evening walks in the archipelago islands off the Swedish west coast, then coming home to something equally warm… a Frangelico Chocolate Fudge Cake.
For the fun of it, I’ll share my own recipe if this is what you too feel you need to that perfect wind-down of a long summer’s evening.
Ingredients
For the chocolate ganache and decorative topping
And here’s what you’ll need to do…
Method for the Cake
Begin by melting the butter in a small bowl, then in a separate bowl, beat the eggs and sugar till the mixture turns a light yellow. Pour the melted butter into the egg mixture and set aside till ready to use.
In a larger bowl, combine the dry ingredients – flour, cocoa powder, baking powder – give it a light whisk or sieve it.
Combine your wet ingredients into your dry ingredients, blending well, adding too, the vanilla essence. Divide the batter into two buttered and floured round cake tins. Bake for ca. 35 minutes or until done at ca. 175 C. In my particular oven, I use ca. 160 C
Method for the Ganache and Topping
Melt the Valrhona Noir 61% block chocolate with the warmed cream. You could, add a dollop of butter into this for a glossy finish to the ganache. To this, I added the Frangelico liquer, not necessarily 4 tbsp but I do liqueur in cakes according to the crowd at the table, and whether they like a heavier dose of liqueur filled cake or not. So personally, it’s very much agak agak and do as you please, as long as the cake doesn’t fall apart from too much liquid in it at the end! Otherwise, chocolate cake pudding would be alright too?
The ganache was split into two little bowls, one bowl, mixed with the hazelnuts and the other, without hazelnuts. Both bowls were Frangelico laced.
Once the cakes are out of the oven, they’re cooled for about half an hour, taken out of their forms and sliced into two or three layers. The layers are then spread with the hazelnut ganache in between the layers. And the plain ganache went on top and down the sizes of the cake.
As a last decoration before the ganache had completely set, some shavings from the block of chocolate, done with the edge of a sharp knife, pulled towards you on the flat side of the chocolate block.
And then there was nothing left to do except serve the cake after it had set, some preferring it microwaved for that melted ganache and some preferred it as is. With a generous dose of laughter from friends at the table… this cake in itself made itself a home in my summer desserts book.