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By: Layne Smith
To call it simply a cake is a vast understatement. To call it dessert would be an enormous over simplification. Though it is a cake, it is surely much, much more than a cake. It is more like an obsession than a pastry and more of a mania than a dessert.
Oh, to be sure, it looks a lot like a chocolate cake. However, a chocolate cake like this is not available just anywhere. Perhaps in far off New York City this cake is available on the menu of some exclusive restaurant, but to the people who probably have eaten more of this cake than anyone, it is only available as a home made item, made from scratch.
I copied the recipe from a book checked out from the local small town library. I copied it because I have checked that book out so many times that the librarian was beginning to ask questions. I copied it because, even though I have been very careful, there is always the possibility of getting batter on the pages. Certainly, the copied pages have transparent grease spots where butter has been accidentally dabbed and indeed there are dark brown speckles where the chocolate cheese cake portion of the batter has, inadvertently, been flung by the mixer blades.
This cake usually requires several trips to the grocery store. While some of the ingredients are common, some are not. I do not typically have semi-sweet chocolate and unsweetened chocolate and cocoa powder around the house. I usually have to buy heavy cream and hazelnuts. Though there are other ingredients such as sugar and eggs, the cake is mostly chocolate and one form or another of butter fat.
It takes as much as three days to make this cake. Of course, if I worked on it nonstop it could probably be done in less than 24 hours, but really, who has 24 hours to devote exclusively to baking a cake. The components are concocted first; candied roasted hazelnuts, chocolate mousse; things that can be sealed and placed in the refrigerator, the chocolate caramel cheese cake alone bakes for hours, infusing the air of the whole house with an intense, rich aroma that has everyone coming to the kitchen to see what is going on. But it too is tightly sealed, after being carefully cooled to insure that its surface doesn’t crack, and packed away for assembly on the last day.
You don't have to actually eat the cake to discover how decadent it is. The cheese cake portion involves cream cheese, eggs, sugar and, of course chocolate. Mixing this together to a sleek, creamy texture is a sensuous undertaking, even before you lick your fingers. The velvet, creamy batter swirls around the mixing blades and when you put in the eggs - yolks only, of course, because the whites are destined to be transformed by ceremonial whipping into an ambrosial mousse - it’s not so much like the yolks are being added but rather like they are coming home. Creating the caramel suffuses the air with an evocative rum and cream aroma. The cake portion doesn’t use common flour. The body of the cake is cocoa power that poufs into dusky clouds when you add it to the butter and eggs. And when you incorporate the chocolate caramel, which has been lovingly warmed in a double boiler and gently but thoroughly stirred to a gleaming deep rich brown, it is not so much the addition of an ingredient but rather a metaphor for world peace.
Assembly on the last day proceeds gradually and carefully despite the throngs of onlookers swarming the kitchen to witness the spectacle. “Oh! can I help?” some inquire. But it will not do at this stage for a fudge cake layer to be broken or chopped hazelnuts nuts to be inadvertently dropped into the silky mousse. In any case the self purported helpers are likely barbarians seeking to lick the spoons, pick at the candies or drag their fingers through the chocolate gaunache.
Oh the gaunache! The crowning glory of the cake! A mixture of cream and caramel flavored dense chocolate which overlays the entire cake, less like plebian frosting and more a lustrous brown coating that glistens with butter fat, and whispers in a husky, sexy voice, “You want me.”
Make no mistake, it is rich. Some less cultivated have even called it heavy but you can tell this by simply looking at it. It is not meant to be served in enormous slabs like the birthday cake you had when you turned five. Correctly served the slice is placed onto a dessert plate upon which caramel has been drizzled and crushed, candied hazelnuts have been very lightly sprinkled. When you are finished you will be pleasantly full, but you may find yourself distracted and pondering the delicate caramel on chocolate flavor later that evening.
I make this in the depths of winter, when frost, fog and arctic air lay heavy in the small mountain valley where I live. Made for my wife’s birthday or Valentines Day it is a celebration, a festival of goodness and cheer and possibly of slight excess. It is the warm embrace of chocolate cuddling my soul, done when the season is cold and fierce
Oh, to be sure, it looks a lot like a chocolate cake. However, a chocolate cake like this is not available just anywhere. Perhaps in far off New York City this cake is available on the menu of some exclusive restaurant, but to the people who probably have eaten more of this cake than anyone, it is only available as a home made item, made from scratch.
I copied the recipe from a book checked out from the local small town library. I copied it because I have checked that book out so many times that the librarian was beginning to ask questions. I copied it because, even though I have been very careful, there is always the possibility of getting batter on the pages. Certainly, the copied pages have transparent grease spots where butter has been accidentally dabbed and indeed there are dark brown speckles where the chocolate cheese cake portion of the batter has, inadvertently, been flung by the mixer blades.
This cake usually requires several trips to the grocery store. While some of the ingredients are common, some are not. I do not typically have semi-sweet chocolate and unsweetened chocolate and cocoa powder around the house. I usually have to buy heavy cream and hazelnuts. Though there are other ingredients such as sugar and eggs, the cake is mostly chocolate and one form or another of butter fat.
It takes as much as three days to make this cake. Of course, if I worked on it nonstop it could probably be done in less than 24 hours, but really, who has 24 hours to devote exclusively to baking a cake. The components are concocted first; candied roasted hazelnuts, chocolate mousse; things that can be sealed and placed in the refrigerator, the chocolate caramel cheese cake alone bakes for hours, infusing the air of the whole house with an intense, rich aroma that has everyone coming to the kitchen to see what is going on. But it too is tightly sealed, after being carefully cooled to insure that its surface doesn’t crack, and packed away for assembly on the last day.
You don't have to actually eat the cake to discover how decadent it is. The cheese cake portion involves cream cheese, eggs, sugar and, of course chocolate. Mixing this together to a sleek, creamy texture is a sensuous undertaking, even before you lick your fingers. The velvet, creamy batter swirls around the mixing blades and when you put in the eggs - yolks only, of course, because the whites are destined to be transformed by ceremonial whipping into an ambrosial mousse - it’s not so much like the yolks are being added but rather like they are coming home. Creating the caramel suffuses the air with an evocative rum and cream aroma. The cake portion doesn’t use common flour. The body of the cake is cocoa power that poufs into dusky clouds when you add it to the butter and eggs. And when you incorporate the chocolate caramel, which has been lovingly warmed in a double boiler and gently but thoroughly stirred to a gleaming deep rich brown, it is not so much the addition of an ingredient but rather a metaphor for world peace.
Assembly on the last day proceeds gradually and carefully despite the throngs of onlookers swarming the kitchen to witness the spectacle. “Oh! can I help?” some inquire. But it will not do at this stage for a fudge cake layer to be broken or chopped hazelnuts nuts to be inadvertently dropped into the silky mousse. In any case the self purported helpers are likely barbarians seeking to lick the spoons, pick at the candies or drag their fingers through the chocolate gaunache.
Oh the gaunache! The crowning glory of the cake! A mixture of cream and caramel flavored dense chocolate which overlays the entire cake, less like plebian frosting and more a lustrous brown coating that glistens with butter fat, and whispers in a husky, sexy voice, “You want me.”
Make no mistake, it is rich. Some less cultivated have even called it heavy but you can tell this by simply looking at it. It is not meant to be served in enormous slabs like the birthday cake you had when you turned five. Correctly served the slice is placed onto a dessert plate upon which caramel has been drizzled and crushed, candied hazelnuts have been very lightly sprinkled. When you are finished you will be pleasantly full, but you may find yourself distracted and pondering the delicate caramel on chocolate flavor later that evening.
I make this in the depths of winter, when frost, fog and arctic air lay heavy in the small mountain valley where I live. Made for my wife’s birthday or Valentines Day it is a celebration, a festival of goodness and cheer and possibly of slight excess. It is the warm embrace of chocolate cuddling my soul, done when the season is cold and fierce
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