I've been away for a while, but I haven't been idling! I have a few bakes that has been sitting in a folder on my desktop for a while now. If I wasn't going to post them any sooner, it may have been never.
I wonder how many of you ever had a slice of the Guanaja, a chocolate cake from Rive Gauche. I had mine first at a friend's birthday dinner and fell in love with it ever since. That bittersweet chocolate accompanied with the slightly sweet and crunchy biscuit base was to-die-for. It had almost been forever that I tried to get the praline biscuit bottom right and I never truly succeeded. The next time I had a chance to sink my teeth into these delectable slices was during my younger sister's birthday back in April when I decided it was the best excuse chance to get this as a birthday cake for her. Everyone raved about the cake and as for me, I sat near the cake, chomping down as many as I could, hoping no one had really noticed.
The next few months were pure torture whenever I thought of and craved for this cake and finally my wish came true when my cousin bought that same cake for his sister's birthday in July.
The attraction of this cake continued to mystify me despite the various attempts are trying out to formulate its composition. Finally! The opportunity emerged when I had much success with the Japanese dark pearl. I realised that the Japanese dark pearl was able to stay nice and moist despite being in the fridge which meant it could be the perfect sponge base for the cake I was dreaming of. Needless to say, the dark intensifying chocolate taste in the cake itself meant that I need not worry about bland chocolate flavours in the mousse.
I had, on many occasions, tried searching for a good praline feuilettine base to to no avail. I read that people replace feuilettine with cornflakes and I've tried and failed. The cornflakes were too hard to bite into and the corn taste was just too overpowering. I knew that if I didn't try it soon, it'll never happen. So, I went ahead, searched for various recipes and mixed and match, altered this and that.
TA-DA! Here it is! My very own version of "Guanaja" which I call, "chocolate crunchy mousse". Now, I've got the taste right, but the presentation failed. The ganache topping cracked real badly over a night in the fridge. I have desperately tried searching for an answer but have found nothing really helpful. All I could speculate now is the temperature of the cake, ganache and fridge. The only logical explanation I have is that, the cake shrunk whilst in the fridge which caused the semi-set ganache to be "torn apart" during the contraction.
Does anyone out there meet with similar problems? Hopefully someone could point me to the right direction =)
Till then...
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