My 59th cake from Rose's Heavenly Cakes: Genoise Tres Cafe. I was looking forward to this cake. It's genoise - with the magical beurre noisette as the base.
For a change, I made the full recipes, baked in several different pans. I got these mini heart shaped pan last year at Sur La Table. It was one of those impulse buy on my 1st visit to the store. I have not used it and at some point regretted buying them. Then I saw this post on Hector's website last December where he used Wilton's miniature heart pan to bake a genoise. Hector said that genoise bake well in any shaped pan. I have been planning on using my heart shaped pan ever since.
There are still a lot of batter leftover after filling up 4 mini heart pan. So I used a 6-cavity Wilton mini heart silicone pan for the rest. Even after that, I still have leftover batter, so I used the financier pan. So yeah this genoise produced 10 mini heart shaped cakes and 4 financiers.
Okay, enough talking about the pans. Let's talk about the cake.
The genoise is easy enough. By now I should be able to do this with my eyes closed. Well ehem.. okay.. maybe not that exactly, but it is easy indeed.
The ganache, as always, proved to be difficult. Or it's just my incompetence talking because I curdled it. Thanks to Rose that in this recipe she mentioned how to save the ganache. I remelted it, rechilled, and rebeat. And it curdled again!
Annoyed (at myself), I remelted it again. This time, I told myself, I better not mess it up. Phew, 3rd time's the charm. It didn't curdle and I was able to pipe pretty decoration on one of the stacked heart cakes. By the time I wanted to do the same decoration on the other little cakes, the ganache was too soft. I re-whip it manually, and it was still too soft and threatened to curdle.
Okay then I give up. No way I'm going to melt the ganache for the 4th time. At least I got a pretty little heart cake out of it.
Tasting impression:
YUM! I'm not a big coffee drinker. I love the smell of coffee more than the taste. Not a huge fan of mocha either, but this cake packs a punch. I love the flavor of the cake and combined with the mocha ganache it is awesome.
Look at you, prepping for an early Valentine Day theme! They are cute! Unlike you, I love coffee in my cakes and if it's mixed with chocolate even better (brings back childhood memories). And I got to agree with you this one packs a coffee punch. Even taking the cover off the cake stand, you can smell the coffee flavor sneaking into your airspace... yumm! The cake is 1/2 way over and I'm ashamed to say that it has been all me eating it.
ReplyDeleteAnd chica, I hear you on the ganache... hate that little sucker!
Love the hear-shaped mini pans, and especially the rose piped on top. With you and Monica having had trouble with the ganache, I think I'd better put my "whipped ganache" shortcut on my blog. I hope you find it useful.
ReplyDeletesoo romantic and fit for Valentine's Day! I love how you piped the 'roses' on the hearts!
ReplyDeleteDelightful! Glad to know about genoise working in any shaped pan.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful. Just absolutely beautiful!
ReplyDeletei love your little cakelettes! bummer about the ganache curdling so often--i'm just about to make mine so i will do it with caution...wish me luck!
ReplyDeleteLove those little heart pans. They look so cute! I'm glad I wasn't the only one that had trouble with the ganache.
ReplyDeleteSomehow, I can go on about cake pans too...and I thought it was just me! Those heart-shaped ones are so cute!
ReplyDeleteAnd that butter-cream looks absolutely heavenly!
Love those double-decker heart flowers! Really nice presentation, Jenn.
ReplyDeleteThis is stunning! I love the shape of this yummy cake. Buerre noisette makes everything that bit more special, don't you think?
ReplyDeleteב''ה
ReplyDeleteLooks pretty. Sorry about the ganache! What chocolate did you?