Surprisingly, everyone loves Rose's Genoise Tres Cafe cake. I honestly didn't think the strong trio of coffee flavors would suit the wide range of taste tester demographics but I was wrong. Even my young granddaughter loved this cake.
Genoise and I still don't see eye to eye but using Wondra flour always makes me sigh with relief. It mixed in without the dreaded flour balls that cake flour seems to produce. I've taken to heating the eggs to just the point of lukewarm in hopes it allows the flour to mix in easier since cold water dissolves flour. If anyone knows some scientific reasoning to avoid flour balls, I'm all ears. I beat it the full five minutes and the batter looked quite nice, still the cake didn't measure up to the full two inches when turned out of the pan. I even weighed the eggs. The day I get a genoise to rise two full inches will be a happy day indeed.
The aroma from the coffee flavored genoise was amazing and instantly made me want to make coffee Madeleine cookies with Rose's buerre noisette. I forgot to cut off the top of the cake but the sugar syrup went through it just fine and didn't seem to make any difference. Perhaps cutting it in half and using the full amount of coffee sugar syrup on the layers made up for it.
Paul Newman 54% chocolate was the closest I could find to the 53% called for in the recipe. I fully intended to throw in a bit of Lindt milk chocolate but got distracted and forgot to buy any. Quibbling over one per cent didn't seem important. The whipped ganache came together easily only because of the tip for watching the beater tracks.
This is a light cake but very rich. The flavors are even more enhanced the next day, as Rose says. We, however, can never wait the requisite twenty four hours!
Mine did not measure up to 2 inches either... I was short by 1/2 and inch! and your pretty ganache!!! Jealous!
ReplyDeleteGreat cake! Did you split your cake in half? That's great everybody loved it. I know how you feel about the genoise; getting a well risen genoise when I made the trifle last May was almost better then the trifle itself.
ReplyDeletebut your cake looks like a full 2 inches to me! Looks wonderfully delicious!
ReplyDeleteI have no idea how to avoid the flour balls. I think I am just going to stick to Wondra. I never used it before but it did the trick! Great cake and thanks for the encouraging words :)
ReplyDeleteVicki, your cake looks pretty tall to me. Glad this is a hit even with the little ones!
ReplyDeleteI don't think you can get a full 2" with the Wondra but I'll take that over sunk/flour-balls-filled/rubbery-on-the-bottom genoise made with cake flour any day :o) What a great idea to split the cake (I wondered why Rose didn't have us do that). You can never have too much ganache :o)
ReplyDeleteI love it :)
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