Penney’s Palate

One of my friends has been talking about a Mexican-themed party that he threw in college, and they called it Mextoberfest. The only requirement for entry was that you had to be wearing a sombrero. Other than that, it was just a party with some Mexican eats and beer pong. He has been talking about hosting a Mextoberfest for all of his coworkers, who didn’t know him in college and therefore, didn’t get to experience Mextoberfest. After about a year of talking about hosting it, I finally demanded that he have Mextoberfest right away, and so he did.

I decided to play around with Mexican chocolate and make some sort of cake with it. I ended up combining a cake, buttercream and ganache from 2 different recipes to create my own version of a Mexican Hot Chocolate cake. It ended up being very tall (4 cake layers with buttercream separating each of them), and very flavorful. Tommy declared it my best cake yet. It is called Mexican hot chocolate because the “Mexican chocolate” that can be bought is used as a hot chocolate mix. It comes in hexagon-shaped chocolate disks that have other spices added in (cinnamon and cayenne of some sort as far as I can tell).

I also thought the cake was excellent, but if (and when) I make it again, I would change a few things:

• The Mexican chocolate was not good to use in the ganache. The ganache never set like it was supposed to. And because it didn’t set up, I had to use it as a pourable glaze for the cake instead of spreading it in between the cake layers. The original cake was supposed to be iced in the buttercream, with the cake layers being separated by the ganache. I think I liked using the buttercream for the layering and the ganache as the outside coating though, I just wished the ganache would have set up correctly. Next time I would just use plain chocolate. As you can see from the picture, the ganache was runny after slicing into the cake too. No amount of refrigeration was going to harden this ganache.

• The buttercream icing was supposed to be a Swiss buttercream frosting. But I didn’t want to deal with the egg whites, so I just turned it into a regular buttercream (powdered sugar and butter). I’d probably try the Swiss buttercream in the future though, because I like how soft and fluffy Swiss and Italian buttercreams are.

• I also ran out of powdered sugar for the buttercream. With time running out before the party started, I had no choice but to attempt to make my own powdered sugar by putting granulated sugar into the blender. It worked a little bit, but not all the way, so my buttercream definitely had a slight sugary crunch to it. Tommy said that he liked the added crunch while eating his slice of cake, but I think he just had pity on me that I ran out of powdered sugar.

I really liked the flavor of the cake, I don’t think I’ve ever had cinnamon in a cake before, other than breakfast-related cake like coffee cake. The cake seemed very moist, which is how I like it. I didn’t have any of the leftover cake that was brought into Tommy’s work after the party, so I’m not sure if it retained the moisture days after it was made or not.

The Cake (Cinnamon Vanilla):

Ingredients
2 sticks butter
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup whole milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preparation
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium bowl sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.

Cream the butter in a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Add sugar and continue to mix until fully incorporated and it is light and fluffy, about 4 minutes.

Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Combine milk and vanilla. Add portions of the flour mixture and milk mixture to the electric mixer, alternating, starting and ending with flour. Pour evenly into 2 buttered and floured 9-inch cake pans.

Bake for 40 minutes or until golden. The cake should pull away from the side and spring back to the touch.

Mexican Hot Chocolate Buttercream

Ingredients
2 sticks butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
4 ounces white chocolate, melted and cooled
3.1 ounce disk Mexican choclate, melted and cooled

Preparation
Cream the butter and sugar. Add the chocolates. Add more sugar if sweeter frosting is desired.

The Ganache Topping

Ingredients
1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 (3.1-ounce) disks Mexican chocolate, finely chopped (I would just use bittersweet chocolate next time)
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces
1 tablespoon light corn syrup

Preparation
Heat the cream in a small saucepan just until simmering.

Place the chopped Mexican chocolate and unsweetened chocolate in a bowl. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate. Let stand for a few minutes, then gently whisk until the chocolate has melted. Stir in the butter until melted, then add the corn syrup. Refrigerate for 20 to 30 minutes until stiff enough to spread. With a spatula, beat the ganache to make it smooth and spreadable.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 6th, 2010 at 11:36 am and is filed under Dessert. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.