Ruh roh.
Dante would be proud.
Tomorrow, for my birthday dinner Friday night, I will be constructing Saveur’s Heaven and Hell Cake. The dessert requires me to bake two cakes – a Devil’s Food cake and a Angel food cake – then slice them in half. Then, I’ll create a peanut butter mousse which I will use to glue the four layers together, top the entire thing in a chocolate ganache, and pipe more peanut butter mouse on the top to decorate it. I didn’t really want to spend my entire birthday shopping for ingredients or in the kitchen, hence why this puppy is being created tomorrow instead.
I think, despite my disinterest in chocolate cake, that the combination of peanut butter and chocolate will make this complex cake just scrumptious. Yes, I said scrumptious. It’s also sparked my interest in creating a themed cake (for Halloween, perhaps) centered around one of my favorite books – Dante’s Inferno (preferred translation by John Ciardi) with the different circles of Hell, the rivers, etc. I should have enough time to get my fondant shaping and chocolate tempering skills solid enough by then to create it. In the meantime, maybe I’ll just make some halos and pitchforks out of white chocolate for the finishing touches of this one.
Which brings us to the second dessert. Tomorrow I’m also creating a twist on peanut butter cups, for my best friend who doesn’t eat sugar or peanuts. I found the recipe on Elena’s Pantry (she calls them Nut Butter Cups) and have scoured town to find the ingredients. I’m sure that I could have substituted or borrowed things from her, but when I first make a recipe I like to make it to the letter (except that with the Heaven and Hell Cake I’m actually substituting in David Lebowitz’s Devil’s Food recipe as I didn’t want to use coffee. Blech.) and then start messing around with it the second or third time. I’ve got everything for both recipes now and tomorrow morning will start jamming on them. Are you ready for decadence?
Update: Photos! Warning…this is not the prettiest cake (I’ve gotten a lot better a making cake…see!)..but it was tasty! We shared it with the next table and the staff at the Geisha House.
The batters…
The cake before icing. No, I did not drop it on the ground. But, you can see the peanut butter mousse between the layers. Mmm….
The final, um, masterpiece?
