One-bowl Chocolate Cake with Ganache and Fudge Frosting

Because I was deep in the throes of my baking phase and the success with batik cakes went to my head, when B’s birthday came up, I decided to bake, not buy, him a chocolate cake.

I had some experience with this, because I had baked the Hershey's Chocolate cake (recipe at the back of the cocoa powder container) before. This was way back when I was 15kgs lighter, 15 decades ago, 15 000 slices of cake back.

A bit of history, if I can share with you. In spite of the fact that my sister and I were unwelcome to wreak mayhem in the kitchen, we had our rebel moments. We knew our mom kept flour in a glass jar. So, one day, we wanted to bake chocolate chip cookies.

We were sifting the flour into the batter when we realised that the hills were alive - name that movie! - and unfortunately, so was the flour. A worm popped its head up, shook excess flour off its head, and stared at us with its beady eyes. My sister and I almost ran for the afore-mentioned hills in horror.

We never baked again.

Until recently.

But let me first clarify, that today, I am attempting to bake an inanimate chocolate cake.

I am undeterred, even though I had the use of my mom's mixer back then, and only had a fork now. Nay, not even a whisk, sire! This is my beloved's cake we are talking about. Fear and lack of baking equipment will not thwart me.

Leading leftovers: Condensed milk, failed cream cheese frosting (for decoration)

One-Bowl Chocolate Cake with Chocolate condensed milk frosting, covered in Chocolate Ganache

The cake (I did half-portion of this recipe by Nanci)
2 cups white sugar
1 3/4 cups self-rising flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees celsius.
2. Grease one nine inch square pan (because that is all I have. I wonder why my aunts and mom only have square pans when so many recipes call for round pans. East-West thing?).
3. In a large bowl, stir together the sugar, flour, cocoa.
4. Add the eggs, milk, oil and vanilla, mix for 2 minutes on medium speed of mixer. Curse and swear for 15 minutes or so if you are mixing it manually with a fork.
5. Add in the boiling water to the batter and mix.
6. Batter will be thin. Pour evenly into the prepared pan.
7. Bake 30 to 35 minutes in the preheated oven, until the cake tests done with a toothpick. While the cake is baking, work on the condensed milk frosting (recipe follows).
8. When cake is done, cool in the pans for 10 minutes.
9. After cake has cooled, divide it in two. Do not cut it when cake is still warm because then the cake might collapse. That left me with two rectangular pieces because I baked with a square pan.

Chocolate condensed milk frosting (I used this one by Robin Joy but there are more varieties here)
1/2 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1/2 (7 ounce, I sed 200g) can sweetened condensed milk
1 pinch salt
1/2 tablespoon water
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. In heavy saucepan, over medium heat, melt chocolate with sweetened condensed milk and salt. Cook and stir until it thickens, about 10 minutes.
2. Remove from heat. Stir in water. When cool, stir in vanilla extract.
3. With the Chocolate condensed milk frosting done, slap the frosting on top of one layer of the cake, level it, and top it with the other layer of cake, so that you have the frosting sandwiched in between two layers of cake. The condensed milk frosting turned out more fudge-like (almost like an incarnation of a batik cake) rather than frosting-like, but great taste-wise. That is okay since we are going to cover up the whole thing in ganache.
4. Store cake in the fridge so ganache can set more easily. Take out failed cream cheese frosting from the fridge.
5. Put the desired quantity of failed cream cheese frosting into a Ziploc bag and leave out to thaw.
6. In the meantime, make the chocolate ganache.

Chocolate Ganache (Sweet Savoury Life is a great resource and JoyofBaking has a fantastic video on it)

8 oz baking chocolate, chopped
3/8 cup heavy cream
1 tbs unsalted butter

1. Place the chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Set aside.
2. Heat the cream and butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. When the mixture is just brought to a boil, turn off flame. Immediately pour the boiling cream over the chocolate and allow to stand, without stirring, for a few minutes.
3. Then stir gently, so as not to incorporate air into the ganache, with a spoon or whisk until smooth.
4. Let the ganache cool to a consistency that you need for spreading on the cake.
5. I then took out my cake from the fridge and spread the ganache on the cake. Again, you may want to watch how Stephanie from Joy of Baking does it.

Cake Decoration:

1. Remember the failed cream cheese frosting in the Ziploc bag? Snip off one of the ends on the bag and use it to pipe circles to create a spiderweb design. This video by ichefany helped me a lot to nail the design.

Wipe off sweat from forehead. Put the whole cake in the fridge and eagerly wait to present it to beloved!