HCB: Designer Chocolate Baby Grand

I was looking forward to making this cake. The name of this cake is just so cute and it looks so adorable, with its shiny glaze and flat top.

I was not, however, looking forward to it being the week after the chocolate banana cake. As much as I like chocolate, it is a little too much to have chocolate cake 2 weeks in a row.

The cake itself is really easy to do. Mix the cocoa powder with boiling water. Once it's cooled to room temperature, mix in the egg yolks and oil and mix until it resembled buttercream. Next, add all the dry ingredients in 2 batches. Finally, mix in the egg whites.

I tried to divide the batter equally between 14 cupcakes. First I distributed 25 grams to each cupcake liner, but then I still had leftover batter. In the end I think I ended up with 29 grams.

The cupcakes baked in 15 minutes. While it's baking, I made the milk chocolate ganache syrup. I heated up the heavy cream, then mix it with the milk chocolate. It is so easy to break the milk chocolate into little pieces. At first I used a knife, but then realized that the chocolate is soft enough that I could use my hands.

Once the cupcake baked, I poked holes all over with a wooden skewer, then applied the syrup. I don't know if any of the HCB bakers managed to use up all the syrup. I couldn't. Even after 3 application, I ended up with a puddle of ganache on top of the cupcakes. Somehow they were not being absorbed very well so I gave up. I had a little leftover ganache, which is now happily sitting in the freezer, accompanying the leftover ganache from the chocolate banana stud cake last week. I'm gonna have to figure out a way to use these 2 little leftovers, perhaps I can get creative with the chocolate featherbed cake, coming up in 3 weeks...

With all the ganache on top of the cupcakes, looking almost as shiny as a lacquer glaze, I made an executive decision right there and then to skip the lacquer glaze. Plus I have these chocolate pearls from Whole Foods that I wanted to use, and as Rose mentioned in the book, I should put them on while the ganache is still wet.



I got a little carried away with the decoration, not sure of what pattern to do, so I ended up with multiple ones. I really like the swirls so there are a few with those. And for fun, there's an "I love you" one. See if you can spot it, :).

Tasting impression:
YUM! It is so good. I was so glad I reduced the sugar in the cupcakes by 25 grams, the sweetness level is good. The chocolate pearls has a little crunch (it has crunchy cereal in the ingredients). I like the texture of the pearls with the cake.