HCB: True Orange Genoise

In an attempt of baking more often but eating less quantity, I vowed to try to make 1/2 recipes from now on. So for this week's selection, I baked 1/2 the genoise in 6 inch pan. I measured everything correctly, but alas, the genoise only turn out to be 1 inch tall! I was too sad and annoyed (and lazy) to remake it so I went ahead with the rest of the recipe.

The syrup was a breeze to make - I used Grand Marnier instead of Triple Sec since that's what I have on hand.

There has been many discussions among my HCB friends about finding Seville oranges. I couldn't find any here so I went with navel oranges instead. Making the orange curd was pretty easy. I love the smell of the curd as I was stirring it on the stove. Smell so orange-y (this is not a real word, though I think it should be :) and tart! It taste yummy too (I stole a spoonful) - and I can't imagine how much better Seville orange curd would have tasted.

I actually had mixed feelings about this cake. Flavor-wise, I was really looking forward it because my favorite chocolate is dark chocolate with oranges. What worries me is because it calls for ganache. Ganache is my nemesis in baking!!! The first time I made ganache last year, it turned grainy and gooey and icky looking so I threw it out. The second time I made it, it never set - even after a day of refrigeration (though it didn't go to waste this time, I bought strawberries and banana and had a yummy chocolate fondue :)). Oh, and keep in mind that I tried different recipes here - so it's not the recipes' fault. You would think third time's the charm, but no, not in this case. The light-whipped ganache I made last month - I renamed into chocolate butter. The texture was odd, too creamy and it didn't want to stick to the cake. It still taste good and we ate the whole cake :). This weekend was the fourth attempt of said nemesis. I made 2/3 of the ganache. Everything went well and I leave the ganache to set in a container at room temperature while I made some soup. Well, 1/2 hour afterwards the ganache looks like it has set so I prepped the cake to be decorated. By the time I was gonna spread the ganache, it was too hard to spread easily. I still persevered but I ended up pushing some of the curd out (they were oozing from the sides of the cake). It's no big loss though I think the cake would lose some of its orange flavor. Back to ganache, I managed to spread it all around the cake nicely - but I didn't have anything left to drizzle on top of the cake (though at this point the ganache is not drizzalable). So I went ahead and made a small batch of it. I made 1/5 of the recipe. This quantity is too small to do in a small food processor, or so I found out right away. So I scrape the whole thing off to a saucepan and heat on low heat while mixing on the stove. This is where the disaster happen. The mixture start to separate. It looks oily and odd. I was about to give up when I remembered an advice from Annie (from Rose's blog) about adding some cream to it. I added about 1 tsp of cream and mix, still looks odd, I add 1 more tsp of cream, and the whole thing came back looking more like ganache. The good thing about the cream also is that it makes the ganache drizzalable (I love this made up word :). And this is the result...



Lalala... I'm so happy that I managed to save ganache...



Tasting impressions: I love this cake! It's really really good! I do wish it's a bit more tart or orange-y. And I realized after it's all done that Rose give tips of reducing the juice oranges if not using Seville - which I forgot to do. Oh well, for next time. For now, I am enjoying this yummy yummy cake.