Hey Joe

There’s a letter I’ve been working on following on from clown school but it needs a bit more time! For now, I hope you like this cake. I like it A LOT. Funny, just as I’m writing this, you’ve sent me text.

Me and a friend were sat on a bench by a train track talking about ice cream flavours. He could choose chocolate but then he wouldn’t get caramel. I could choose caramel, and I wouldn’t get the chocolate. Big stuff, I know. It struck me that the worry of the flavour we might have missed out on by making a choice was equal to, if not greater than, the pleasure we’d get from eating the flavour we did choose.

The Charmalade Cake – two layers of soft chocolate cake and salty chocolate mousse, with marmalade, white chocolate water ganache, and raspberries – is a cake about choice.

The idea was to make a cake which required me to make a series of decisions, meaning the cake had to have several components to it. And I could only make each decision in turn, like making a move to get to the next level of a game. In other words, I wasn’t allowed to have a plan, so I had to choose what I wanted in real-time. That’s how the charmalade cake was made.

I’m aware that at this moment, being able to make any choice has been put in perspective by the war happening now in Palestine. Right now, especially, it’s a privilege to make choices. This is so sad. I hope that whoever is reading this might hold that thought in their mind for a bit, like I have the last week while writing this to you. There isn’t an acceptable way to move on to the recipe now, it just will be as clunky as this.

Ingredients

Cake

• 150g Dark Chocolate
• 150g Boiling Water
• 300g Sugar
• 225g Salted Butter, softened
• 3 Medium Eggs
• 150g Yoghurt, get one with a 7 or 8 percent fat content. I use plain Greek-style natural yoghurt
• 225g Plain Flour
• 3/4 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
• 75g Cocoa Powder

Salty Chocolate Mousse

• 50g Dark Chocolate, roughly chopped
• 370g Double Cream
• 200g Cream Cheese
• 1tsp (4g) Salt
• 50g Icing Sugar

To Assemble

• A couple of tablespoons of marmalade, I used thick-cut marmalade made by my mum and from my Oma’s recipe.

White Chocolate Water Ganache

• 85g White Chocolate
• 8g Golden Syrup
• 20g Boiling water straight from the kettle

To Finish

• Raspberries

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 / 160 fan. Grease and line two 8 inch / 20cm round cake tins.

Chop up the dark chocolate roughly and add it to a bowl you can cover. To this bowl add the boiling water then cover with a lid (I used a plate) and set aside. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until fluffed up slightly. Add one egg at a time, beating into the butter mixture until fully combined before adding the next. Remove the lid from the chocolate which should now be melted and liquid. Stir to ensure the chocolate is fully melted then mix into the butter mixture. The batter will be quite liquid now, that’s fine. Add the yoghurt, flour, bicarbonate of soda and cocoa powder to the bowl. Give everything a good mix to combine, this is easiest with electric beaters. Divide the batter evenly between the two tins and bake for 35mins or until a knife inserted into the cake comes out with a few moist crumbs. These cakes are likely to sink a bit in the middle, but that’s ok.

Now make the mousse. Start by making a chocolate ganache by heating 70g of the cream in a small saucepan until just simmering at the sides and pouring it over the dark chocolate in a small bowl. Cover the bowl with a plate and set aside Add the cream cheese, salt and icing sugar to a large bowl and beat with an electric whisk for about a minute. The mixture will initially go very loose and then stiffen. At this stage, mix in 100g of the double cream to slacken the mixture again and then the remaining 200g. Beat the mixture until soft peaks. All these steps just make sure the mixture is stable and doesn’t end up as a soup. Stir your ganache to make sure the chocolate is all melted and use a spatula to quickly fold through the cream mixture. Just be aware that the ganache will stiffen when it hits the cold cream, that’s why you are folding it through quickly.

Next, the cake is ready to be layered. Spread about a third of the chocolate mousse on the first cake layer. Add the marmalade to the middle of the first layer and use the back of a spoon to gently spread it out a little, making sure to leave a generous border with no marmalade (it will get spread to the edges with the weight of the second cake). Place the second cake on top and cover the top and sides with the rest of the mousse. Put the whole cake in the fridge to firm up while you make the white chocolate ganache. You could leave the cake in the fridge over night at this point.

Lastly, make the ganache. Roughly chop the white chocolate and add that to a large metal or glace bowl with the golden syrup and water. Place the bowl over a bain marie. Mix with a spatula until all the chocolate has melted. Top the cake with raspberries and finish by pouring over the ganache wherever you choose (preferably not on the floor).

Have a good sunday. Caitlin xx