Disappointingly Dark

It's been a long time coming.  I have been craving chocolate cake for a long time, and have had my eye on a particular recipe which includes marscapone cheese and ground almonds.  The image from the cook book showed a glorious three tiered cream filled chocolate cake with a pale chocolate frosting.  I would have made it months ago however marscapone cheese required going to the big supermarket and not my mini tesco express (regular haunt for forgotten/dimishing cake supplies).  This week I remembered to pick up the marscapone and so the cake could commence!

The whole recipe called for 400g of dark chocolate, 150g of which went melted, directly into the sponge.  This teamed with the cocoa powder, 4 eggs, light muscavado, butter, and self raising flour made me excited.  The recipe promised a gooey dark, naughty sponge.  I melted, whisked, folded and baked for the required time.  However as soon as the oven dinger went and I opened it up (a whole hour in the oven) I realized that it had not risen nearly high enough and should have been removed about 5-10 minutes earlier.  Damn my oven.  

However, I had not given up yet.  I allowed it to cool, whisked the cream for the filling and melted down the remaining chocolate and beat it into the marscapone.  I sliced the cake in two filled and iced!

I loved the consistency of the chocolate and marscapone icing.  It was deceptively paler, suggesting a milk chocolate hit but the 70% chocolate still shone through.  I love this photo as I think it looks like a close up of thick oil paints.

So I cut the cake at dinner and it didn't go down so well.  My concerns were realized.  It was just just JUST the wrong side of goey and had gone crumbly.  It didn't cut into three tiers as it hadn't risen enough AND the whole thing was very dark in flavour much to my families dissapointment.  They don't mind dark chocolate but it needs to have (in their opinion) a sweet lift of icing, of filling.  In this case I tend to agree.

For me you get a dark sinfully bitter chocolate fix from a slither of rich chocolate torte or prehps a goey browny.  However, a playfully sweet looking fudgey cake should have a comforting sweetness about it.

I am tempted to try this recipe again as I do love the inclusion of the almonds and marscapone.  However, I think I would add a little icing sugar to the icing, a little baking powder to the batter and reduce the cooking time by about 7 minutes.  Then I think potentially, it could be a winner.