Burning down the house

Yesterday it was my sister-in-laws birthday BBQ and I promised to make her a cake. She hadn't told me what sort of cake she wanted so as I got to choose...chocolate!!

While I was googling for a recipe I stumbled across this recipe for a double chocolate layer cake. It has over 1000 reviews which apparently makes it the most popular recipe on epicurious, so I thought it was definitely worth a try.

As I have a small oven I had to bake the 2 layers separately. All started off well, the first layer went like a dream, and then I popped in the second. About half an hour later my sister-in-law came running out of the kitchen yelling "FIRE! FIRE!!". The smoke alarm was bleeping and smoke was bellowing out of the oven - my 2nd layer was a disaster! It seems the oven must have automatically switched back to its maximum heat (which I dint't see) and I then was baking my cake at 250 degrees rather than the 150 the recipe called for - not so good. To say the least I was not a happy chappy.

That was enough baking for one night, so I got up early the next morning to attempt layer 2 for the second which actually ended up turing out better then the 1st (you can see in the bottom pick the top layer was much more moist). Then it was time to make the ganache which had almost half a kilo of delicious Callebaut chocolate....mmmmmmmmm...and then had to wait for what felt like forever to cool it down in order to ice the cake.

I have to say, despite the close call with setting the kitchen on fire, I am very proud of the end result. I would not say it was the best chocolate cake I have eaten, but it was damn good. Everyone else seemed to enjoy it too!

But now, 2 days later, you can still smell the burnt chocolate cake throughout the house.