Hey guys! I am super excited about this post! Because this is one of my favourite cakes. This is the kinda cake I would crave for my birthday. It has everything I love, chocolate, chocolate, CHOCOLATE! Haha
This cake is a chocolate buttermilk cake, filled between the layers with a coconut mousse, iced with dark chocolate ganache. Garnished with triple chocolate macarons, gold leaf and belgium macarons. Yum! I love coconut so much and I love using it in my baking because I find it brings so much flavour and texture to the cake. I just love how simple this cake looks, but at the same time it looks so deletable.
The belgium macarons are one of my favourite treats. It is meringue and coconut with streaks of dark chocolate through the meringue. You can serve them as a biscuit by themselves, but I always like to spice up my cakes and give them different decorations.
I used to make these belgium macarons at my old cafe in NZ when I was their pastry chef. They were so delicious I had to restrain myself from licking the bowl. The belgium macarons they make a very chocolate infused, so they are coloured brown because they have a lot of chocolate in them. But because this cake had already so many elements of chocolate I needed something to contrast with it so I didn't add much chocolate to the mix.
The thing I like about my entries is that their is multiple recipes linked to them. So if you don't want to make the full cake, you can make elements of the cake and use them for your own baking. Use the biscuits for a tea party one day, use the chocolate ganache for an icing for your cake, use the coconut mousse for a glass dished dessert with your own garnishes.
I think that makes my blog quite unique is that every blog entry is very valuable with the amount of knowledge and resources I am providing.
I miss making my cakes, and my Instagram feed is continually filled with cakes and inspirations. I just want to get my hands back on cake making and begin a business again. Don't get me wrong I love travelling and meeting new people, buts sometimes I wish i could come home to my well established home. Instead I have been living out of my suitcase for the past 2 months.
Luckily I found a place to stay in vancouver. It is only about 5 blocks up from the hotel so I will be able to walk all my stuff up to my new apartment. I will try pick a non rush hour time while I roll my suitcase along the pedestrian crossings. I am thinking like 10am once everyone has started their office job because I am living in a huge office area.
I am so happy I found this place because it is downtown which means I can still walk to my gym, work, supermarket ect. Heaps of people say live out in the suburbs, but as a traveller I don't want to do that and have to commute 30minutes on a bus to work. That will just make work even more longer then it already is. The rent is the cheapest I could get so I can save money to invest in a drone. (My next camera purchase for my travels) It is $545 a month, which is a 100x better from $1400 in Sydney, but I also lived 100m from the beach and had a nice two bedroom apartment with my own room. But the wages in Canada are so uncertain and I rely on tips, I have good weeks and bad weeks. I had to give myself the best opportunity to save and I find the best way doing that is cheap rent. I met two of the guys I am going to be living with when I went and inspected the place. They are so super chill, one is Mexican and one is Australian. The guy I will be sharing a room with is Canadian and works as a server as well so we hopefully will be on similar routines and not disturbing each others sleep.
I honestly screamed when I got the place, I was thrilled. It is so competitive to lock down a place in Vancouver especially in Summer, the days are sunny and long. It is even harder to lock down a place in downtown Vancouver unless you have a goldmine. Most places rent out storage places (no windows it is literally a closet) you can fit a single bed in the closet and the mattress will touch both sides. The starting rent for this is $800 and can cost more depending what area you are in.
Vancouver is a huge turning point for me, it is time for me to get serious. 6 months at biggie was amazing, it was so much partying, snowboarding and not much working. But I am a very ambitious person and I have goals in place and dreams to make happen. Coming to Vancouver I wanted to get back more into my baking, blogging and videography. I kept looking at all my blog entries I hadn't uploaded and thought well no one can see my hard drive, I need to get my media up on the internet.
So I left all my friends from biggie to do my own summer. I didn't want to go to a seasonal town like Jasper, Banff, Whistler where it is full of more Aussies, lots of drinking, partying, drugs and plenty of wasted days in bed. I had done that for 6 months and knew if I wanted to complete another winter season I had to live a normal routined life for 6 months. So I am so happy with my decision to coming to Vancouver. It's a beautiful city and very liveable apart from the fact the wages don't meet the lifestyle pricing.
So I hope to move into my new place, they have a pretty old kitchen, but because it is a huge sky tower filled of apartments, they have a gym, games room and like a huge living area with a kitchen as well. So I saw that and was thinking its better lighting then my apartment so I could prepare my ingredients and do my filming down there. At least it will be clean and good lighting.
The first few recipes I cannot wait to try out is protein balls, cliff bar recipe and Italian Ricotta Cake!!! Omg this was my favourite cake that I would make as a pastry chef at Mavis. I finally got hold of the recipe after two years because I lost it on my old mac, once it died.
This cake I tried to make for my Italian boyfriends friend, but I don't think I cooked it long enough and let it sit in the fridge to set because it was the crumbly texture I liked about the one I made at Mavis. So I am so super excited to try that one out. I think I am going to make it for my 20th Birthday! 20! I know crazy.
The thing is I can't go back to making these cakes in Vancouver without someone to sell it too. It just doesn't make sense, I am not going to eat the cake and my cakes are super rich so they are for like 15+. So I am going to be making treats that I will eat or my friends will which won't cost me too much to make.
And since I cannot make my extravagant cakes I am gonna focus a lot on my videography. So I will blog on how to make all the treats and edit them and upload them to this website. That is the very new exciting platform that is coming to this website!
Recipe:
Dark Chocolate Double Macaron Cake
Chocolate Ganache Macarons:
Chocolate Buttermilk Cakes:
Chocolate Ganache:
Chocolate Coconut Macaroons:
250g white sugar
178ml water
3 large egg whites
3 cups unsweetened coconut
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
100g dark chocolate, melted
Method:
Preheat oven to 175 degrees. Line flat rectangle trays with baking paper.
A trick for when your making meringues and to keep the baking paper in place. Stick some meringue on every corner of the baking paper and stick it to the tray.
Spread coconut evenly on a rectangle tray and toast for 3-5 minutes.
Once they start to golden up, pull them out of the oven and set aside to cool.
Begin to make your meringue.
Combine your sugar and water in a saucepan over medium heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Bring the mixture to a boil and stop stirring and insert a thermometer.
While the sugar mixture is cooking, place your egg whites in a dry clean bowl and begin whipping them on medium speed once your sugar mixture hits 105 degrees.
You want to time your eggs to be at medium peaks when your sugar mixture is done and reaches a temperature of 114 degrees.
When the sugar mixture has hit 114 degrees, remove from the heat. Turn the speed down on your beaters to low. With a steady stream begin pouring your sugar syrup into the egg whites with the beaters running. Careful trying not to hit the sides of the bowl with the sugar syrup.
Once the sugar is all incorporated increase the speed to high, and whisk until the mixture cools down to room temperature.
Fold in toasted coconut by hand. Then pour in melted chocolate and fold only a couple of times, to give the marble effect of dark chocolate streaks and white meringue. Scoop onto prepared baking tray.
Bake for 12-15 minutes, I don't really like mine to colour up because I like that they keep their marble effect. Bake until they have a solid crisp bottom to the biscuit.
Coconut Mousse:
2 1/2 teaspoons unflavoured gelatine
1/4 cup cold water
2 cups coconut milk
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup shredded coconut
1/2 teaspoon coconut extract
2 cups cream
Method:
Line small 9cm cake tins with glad wrap. Sprinkle gelatine over the water in a small bowl. Set aside and let it stand for 5 minutes.
In a small saucepan warm the milk, sugar, shredded coconut, coconut extract until the sugar dissolves.
Remove from heat and transfer to a cold bowl.
Mix your gelatine mixture through the warm milk mixture.
Whip the cream until it has stiff peaks.
Fold the whipped cream into the coconut mixture until it looks uniform.
Pour the mousse into the greased cake tins. Leave to stand at room temperature until set.
Assembly:
Layer and cut the tops off the cakes so they are levelled. Place one layer of a cake on the cake board and pipe a ganache border, place coconut mousse filling in the middle of the cake. Sprinkle coconut chips over the top of the mousse for more added flavour and texture.
Cover the cake up with chocolate ganache and make a crumb coat and put in the fridge.
Once the crumb coat is set remove from the fridge and ice your final smooth ganache layer.
Drizzle your chocolate ganache drizzling down the side of the cake.
Decorate the cake with chocolate macarons, a chocolate sail, coconut macaroons and gold leaf.
Yum the chewy coconut goes so well with the rich chocolate cake! One of my favourite flavour and decorating cakes!
