Green Tea Yogurt Cake with Dark Chocolate Ganache

happy birthday daddyo !

my dad used to tease me with brutal honesty: 

"denise, your cakes are alright to be eaten at home...but they can't be sold, no one would buy them".

ouch.

that was in 2010 when he said that. since then every year I have been baking him a cake anyways - you can only get better right? - & he hasn't made any similar remarks anymore, which I guess is good news.

prepare the green tea yogurt cake batter

pour the batter into the prepared tins

baked, oops the top cracked...no worries, the ganache will fix that. 

prepare the dark chocolate ganache

the assembly

ooooh chocolate drips....

nom nom

Makes a double-layer 6-inch square cake

Ingredients (green tea cake)

-          Plain flour, 75g

-          Cake flour, 70g

-          Baking powder, ½ teaspoon

-          Salt, a pinch

-          Green tea powder, 2 teaspoons

-          Sugar, fine 100g

-          Oil, soyabean, 100g

-          Egg, 1 ½

-          Yogurt, low-fat, plain, 130g (1 tub)

-          Vanilla essence, 1 teaspoon

Methods

1. Preheat oven to 175ºC.
2. Line two 6” square cake tins with greaseproof paper.
3. Sift together all the flour, baking powder salt and green tea powder, set aside.
4. In a large bowl, beat the sugar, oil and eggs until smooth.
5. Stir in the vanilla essence.
6. Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the yogurt, mixing until just combined.
7. Pour batter into the two prepared tins until ½ filled.
8. Bake for 20 – 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
9. Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 20 minutes before turning it out of its tin.

Ingredients & Methods (dark chocolate ganache)*

From Martha Stewart’s Dark Chocolate Ganache

But I used whipping cream instead of heavy cream, the difference between the 2 lies in the fat content.

* this recipe makes about 3 ½ cup of ganache which would be more than what you need for the cake, so freeze the remaining in an air-tight container for up to 2 weeks.

The Assembly

1. Spread some ganache on the 1^st layer of cake.
2. Top with some dried cranberries (optional).
3. Place the 2^nd layer of cake above the cranberries.
4. Pour enough ganache over the 2^nd layer to cover the whole cake.
5. Spread the ganache evenly and chill the cake until ready to serve.

How was it?

Cake:
too dense & compact

Ganache:
great but it was more ganache-y after freezing & thawing, otherwise it is more like a glaze.

Better it up!

Cake:

1) replace yogurt with low-fat milk. 

2) Step #4, beat the eggs till foamy before beating in the other ingredients (to create more air pockets in the cake batter so it wouldn't be too dense/compact)

Ganache:
use heavy whipping cream. 

The Verdict

Recipe Adopted from...

Building Buttercream (Green Tea Yogurt Cake)

Martha Stewart (Dark Chocolate Ganache)