How’s that for a title? The birthday girl requested the Strawberry Well Cake* with berries and cream in the well, but chocolate frosting and definitely without dots like the one below. She said the family was looking at lower sugar than the last cake I made for them, but she hadn’t realized that angel food cake is perhaps the sweetest of all cakes being made of just sugar, egg whites and enough flour and leavening to hold it together.
I opted to buy a select dark chocolate and make a ganache for the top of this cake as it would be less sugar than chocolate frosting. I also believe the contrast between sweet cake and bittersweet chocolate plus cream, strawberries and raspberries is, ahem, divine.
Ganache is simply equal parts by weight of chopped chocolate with hot cream poured over it, allowing it to sit for 5 minutes before stirring. Since it would melt the whipped cream, this particular birthday cake did not have whip on the top and the ganache had to be cooled a bit before it was poured over the top of the cake. It could not be spread like frosting is spread because the top was uneven due to the cake “well” being filled and pieces of cake popping up here and there.
*The process by which this cake is made involves careful removal of sections of the baked angel food cake, a filling of sliced strawberries and whole raspberries stirred into slightly-sweetened vanilla whipped cream, re-insertion of the piece/pieces of cake, frosting the outside and top of the cake with the whip. This process is illustrated in detail in a previous blog post: https://mschefinseattle.com/2016/01/05/winter-birthday-strawberry-well-cake/
Try it! Elegant and delicious.
Ms Chef in Seattle 