Monday, December 24, 2007

Triple-Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Peppermint Filling

My husband has the misfortune of having a Christmas Eve birthday, making the stretch from the 24th and 25th of December full of gifts, sweets, and events. Wait, maybe misfortune is not quite the right term to use!

It is his tradition to get a mint chocolate chip log roll cake from Baskin Robbins every year, and I kept pestering him, telling him I could make something better, and this year he decided to let me have a shot.

I'm not sure I met the challenge. There were a few issues with this recipe that made me wish I had done a trial run, but between surgery and other holiday baking I just didn't have a chance!

I made the Triple-Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Peppermint Filling from epicurious.com, after an extensive cookbook and internet search for something chocolate minty. The filling is a soft ganache made with milk chocolate, the cake batter has cocoa powder and mini chocolate chips, and the glaze has semisweet/bittersweet chocolate (I used a mixture of both). Now when I count that, I get four chocolates, but maybe that name was taken.

My biggest complaint is the cake itself. It could be my fault, but I overcooked it way too much. I think part of the reason is the mini chocolate chips, which increase the cooking temperature of the cake far past a normal cake would cook once it is taken out of the oven. So because the cake was practically crusty on the outside, the gloss was not as smooth as I would have liked (in fact, this first picture shows some of the ganache peeking through).

Triple-Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Peppermint Filling

Flavor wise, it was pretty good, but I was too distracted by the dryness of the cake. The filling was possibly the best part, and I also substituted one of the teaspoons of vanilla for peppermint extract in the cake, so it was all quite pepperminty.

I'm having a hard time deciding if this was even what I would consider "good" or not. Peppermint is something I enjoy but doesn't really rank in my top dessert flavors (unless we're talking mochas, in which case peppermint is my #1) so I could take or leave this cake.

I served this with Ben & Jerry's Mint Chocolate Cookie ice cream, which upped the mint even more. What I am wishing now is that I had tried to replicate the original Baskin Robbins cake, and just make an improved version. I think that was my intent before I started recipe hunting, and then it turned into a completely different animal.

Categories: Cake, Chocolate, Mint

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