TBB: Chocolate Cuddle Cake

I made this cake in record speed...because I was running out of time, so I did a lot of short-cuts.  I didn't follow instructions exactly on the book, but I followed exactly the ingredients and weight measurements. 

First, I made the ganache.

I placed the cream, chocolate pieces into the glass bowl and microwave 20seconds x 2.

And got a smooth ganache. Then stirred in the Kuala and vanilla extract...and set aside to cool.

I forgot to take photos of cake making process because I was doing 2 things at the same time with both hands.  One hand was holding a hand-held mixer to beat the yolks/sugar/oil/chocolate/flour mixture and the other hand was pouring the sugar into my standing bowl mixture where the egg white was being whipped to become meringue. This way, I don't have to wait..I can have both ready at the same time to be folded in together. So, both hands tied... and my helper was busy with other things she had to do...  

Finally...after folding the egg white into the chocolate mixture, I poured the batter into the removable base pan.  From my experience baking chiffon in pan, there is no need to line the pan, neither is there a need to put a nail in the centre.  (I also did not put a cake strip around the pan either - actually I didn't realise I needed a cake strip around the pan..:p!).   So I took my chance and didn't do all that and baked in removable base pan.

While the cake is in the oven baking, I made caramel.  Not a lot of camarel..so I used my tiny non-stick saucepan.  

Somehow, I didn't have any extra caramel left over. 

You can see the total caramel I had was 153g!..and I wasn't going to keep that 3g of caramel! 

Poured the chocolate/cream mixture into the caramel.

This is my chiffon cake stand.  I think this is popular in Asia. 

I see this chiffon cake stand for removal base pan in Chinese baking books quite often.  

And this is very good stand to have imo. :)  

Cake out of the oven and I flipped over the pan to let it stand on the chiffon cake stand..but I didn't centre the stand properly.. as long as the pan didn't fall over.   The stand despite being very thin, it's quite steady. It supports the removable base from collapsing onto the chiffon cake while cooling.

After cooling, I removed the cake from the pan...had to cut very close to the edge of the pan..like how you remove chiffon from tube pan.

You can see there are 4 small holes. The top is a bit burnt because I thought I lowered the temperature of the oven to 175c, but I didnt and it was set at a slightly higher temperature.

The top was very smooth...no cracks. 

Marie mentioned that Woody said have to measure the height, so I had to find my ruler to measure my cake and take a picture as well. Quite high! :D  

I turned the cake upside down to frost the cake.

Frost with ganache...and pipe tiny shells on top.

Fill with Caramel Whipped Cream. I should have warmed up my caramel before I added to the whipped cream. Because I thought at our 27c room temperature, it should never fall below 21c. But when I put into the cold whipped cream, the caramel hardened! Yikes..very hard to make blend into the whipped cream.  I keep beating until the cream actually seized!..from over beating. I try to salvage it by adding more cream..and it worked..not 100% smooth...but at least 90% smooth and 10% grainy...

Below:  A slice of the chocolate cuddle cake - a brighter pic, verses a darker version.

I took all the photos with my phone, so the first photo didn't look as nice when I try to focus on the cake and the surrounding becomes over-exposed. 

How do we like it?  It's very good! Everyone in my family said it's good. The Caramel Whipped Cream is soo YUMMY! I like this new, refreshing flavor as a whipped cream. I love it so much, I think next time I will put caramel into my buttercream as well!  I would have preferred the cake to be sliced into 2 and layered with more caramel whipped cream.  The cake I find too tall with nothing in centre...quite a waste because the caramel whipped cream is soooo good..could have had more of it.

The cake is good too. Moist, spongy, soft. However, I felt it is not as soft as a regular chiffon because this chiffon cake uses unbleached flour as opposed to cake flour. I have tried other chiffon recipes in pan with cake flour and it worked as well and softer too.  I love this recipe, so I will definitely be making it again. But next time I will try with cake flour and double up the caramel whipped cream.