Whiskey-Soaked Chocolate & Marzipan Cake Recipe

chocolate-whiskey-marzipan-cake.md

Whiskey-Soaked Chocolate & Marzipan Cake Recipe

Based on: http://www.sugaryandbuttery.com/2014/01/triple-layer-chocolate-marzipan-cake.html

Serves: 14

These quantities are for one of the two cakes pictured.

INGREDIENTS

Cake

• 225 g butter/margarine¹
• 150 g light muscovado sugar
• 100 g caster sugar
• 6 eggs
• 200 g ground almonds
• 120 g plain white flour
• 200 g grated dark chocolate²
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons almond extract
• ¼ teaspoon salt

Ganache

You can use these quantities as ratios if you need to make extra. You can use cream instead of coconut if you don't need to be dairy free. Not sure exactly how much cream I'd use in this case — experiment by making up a small quantity (~20g chocolate), starting with ~10g cream and adjusting from there until the consistency is right, then scale up. See this advice on ganache cream ratios.

• 250 g dark chocolate²
• 125 g coconut milk — from solid half of can³
• 45 g coconut milk — from clear liquid half of can³
• 45 g whiskey⁴
• 40 g icing sugar⁵
• About 4 small pinches of salt⁵

Whiskey Syrup

• 90 g white sugar
• 80 g whiskey⁴
• 10g water

Marzipan

This quantity of marzipan was only just enough. Increase by 10–20% to make assembly easier.

• 100 g ground almonds
• 50 g caster sugar
• 50 g icing sugar
• 40 g whiskey⁴

Decorations

1. ~1 tablespoon cocoa powder to coat truffle balls
2. ~50 g dark chocolate² to make chocolate flakes/curls

DIRECTIONS

Cake

I used a large rectangular baking tray 37.5 x 25 x 2 cm. The exact size doesn't matter. You can scale the recipe based on this area/volume. E.g. 37.5 x 25 = 937 cm², so you could use a 30 x 30 cm pan (900 cm²) or 3x 20cm round pans (3 x PI x (20/2)² = 942 cm²).

1. Preheat oven to 150°C (fan oven). Grease and line your pan.
2. Sieve muscovado sugar into a bowl to remove lumps. Add the white sugar and butter. Beat for several minutes until the mixture becomes smooth and little paler.
3. Beat the eggs and almond extract into the butter/sugar mix. (You can add the eggs one at a time to try to avoid splitting, but mine split anyway and still worked fine.)
4. In a separate bowl, combine the remaining cake ingredients.
5. Put the wet and dry mixes into one bowl and gently beat on a low speed to combine. Mix as little as possible to get an even mixture.
6. Pour into your pan and spread out with an offset spatula. Try to make the mixture a little thinner in the centre than the edges, as the centre will rise more than the edges. This should give you a flatter result when it's cooked, which is important to avoid wasting cake when you trim it.
7. Bake the cake slowly — my pan took 32 minutes. I recommend using a cooking thermometer to check for done-ness. It'll be cooked at high 90s°C — mine was 97°C in the middle when I took it out. The top didn't brown much, so it deceptively looked under done.
8. Let the cake cool for 10 minutes, then run a knife around the edge, and turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

Ganache

1. Roughly chop chocolate into smallish pieces so that it melts quickly.
2. Place everything apart from chocolate into a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on 100% for 20 seconds to melt the solid coconut milk, then stir to combine.
3. Add the chopped chocolate and mix.
4. Microwave on 100% for ~15 seconds, then remove and mix for ~10-20 seconds. Repeat this microwaving—mixing process several times. Stop microwaving once only a few small lumps of chocolate remain. Keep mixing at this point — the residual heat will melt the remaining few lumps. This ensures you won't overheat the chocolate, which could burn it or cause it to split.⁶

Whiskey Syrup

1. Place sugar, whiskey and water into a saucepan.
2. Heat over a low–medium heat, stirring or swirling the pan often until the sugar has all dissolved. Don't heat it beyond this point, as it'll thicken too much.

Whiskey Marzipan

1. Mix ground almonds and sugars in a bowl until combined.
2. Pour in whiskey and mix by hand with a spoon until a uniform paste is achieved.
3. Kneed the paste briefly in the air between both hands to ensure it's fully mixed.
4. Wrap the marzipan paste in cling film and leave in the fridge until needed.

Main Assembly

1. Trim the cake using a long, sharp, knife. First trim the top surface to flatten it and remove any crispy bits — remove as little as possible. Then trim each side to remove the harder bits at the edge of the pan (~0.5cm each side). Reserve the trimmings to make the truffle balls later.
2. Divide the cake into 3 identical pieces for the 3 layers. Use something straight as a guide to ensure even cuts.
3. Using a pastry brush, apply ⅕ of the syrup to the top of the 3 cake layers.
4. Roll out the marzipan out large enough to cover two of the cake layers. Dust the work surface and rolling pin well with icing sugar. Keep dusting with icing sugar to avoid sticking. If the marzipan does stick to the surface, release it by covering a thin palette knife with icing sugar and gradually work it under the marzipan with quick back and forward movements until the marzipan is free.
5. Slice the rolled out marzipan into two pieces — one piece to separate each layer. Cover the marzipan in cling film to avoid it drying out before it's needed.
6. Apply a thin layer of ganache to the bottom cake layer.⁷ Cover with half the rolled-out marzipan, then cover the marzipan with another thin layer of ganache. Top with another cake layer — syrup-side down.
7. Using a flat object (like a small cutting board, palette knife or cake lifter) apply some pressure to the cake to squeeze together the layers, ensuring they're flat and well-joined.
8. Brush the top of the cake with the next ⅕ of the syrup.
9. Repeat steps 6—8 to assemble the next layer.
10. Apply a thicker layer of ganache to the top of the cake, smoothing well.
11. Refrigerate the cake for an hour or more to firm it up. Then with a sharp knife, trim the sides of the assembled cake to achieve flat, square edges. Again, reserve these trimmings for the truffle balls.

Truffle Balls

1. Make truffle balls by whisking the cake trimmings until they break up into crumbs, then add enough of the remaining ganache to form a thick, smooth paste.
2. Work out how many balls you want, then evenly divide the mixture, roll into balls between the palms of your hands. Place them on a plate (not touching each other) and refrigerate until firm (~1 hour).
3. Put 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder into a bowl. Proceeding one ball at a time, roll the balls again to smooth them further and slightly warm them, allowing the cocoa to stick better. Place into the cocoa powder and roll around to coat.

Chocolate Flakes/Curls

You'll find plenty of guides for making chocolate curls on YouTube. Basically:

1. Melt the chocolate, then pour onto a glass/marble/ceramic surface. Spread into a thin layer with an offset spatula. (You can use a metal surface only if you use a plastic implement to scrape, otherwise you'll get metal flakes in your curls!).
2. Once the chocolate is firm, but not really hard, scrape layers of chocolate off the surface with a knife at a shallow angle.

Final Assembly

1. Transfer the cake to a serving plate (something more appropriate than my owl board).
2. Gently soften the top layer of ganache to allow the balls and flakes to stick. You just need to warm it until the surface looks wet and shiny. I did this with a blowtorch, taking care not to keep the flame in one place and not letting the flame get too close. Another way would be to hold a strong light bulb near the cake. I don't recommend using a hair drier, as the air flow will likely push the melted ganache off the top.
3. Place the balls on top, slightly pressing them into the ganache to ensure they hold.
4. Spread chocolate flakes between the balls.

Footnotes

1. I used Stork Baking Block to be dairy free.
2. Use good quality, about 70% cocoa solids. I used Green & Blacks 70%. (This is marked as possibly containing milk, but I was advised by the dairy-intolerant cake recipient that this was OK.)
3. I used a can of coconut milk with 18% fat. In my experience, the can is always separated into a solid and clear liquid when opened. I guess you might need to chill the can overnight in warm countries.
4. I used Jack Daniels
5. Best to add a little at a time and keep tasting
6. I prefer using a microwave to heating the cream in a pan, as in my experience it's safer. The mixture seems less likely to split as it heats at the same rate, and never gets too hot (personally I don't like wasting 100s of g of chocolate...). It's also more convenient as only one bowl is needed!
7. I weighed my ganache, determined I had enough for 120 g per-layer, so used 60 g above and below each layer of marzipan and 120 g on top. My scales make this easy, as they read negative — I zero the scales with the bowl of ganache on top, then spoon out ganache until the scale reads -60.