Bake-a-long Week 4: Chocolate Week

The Bake-a-long continues with Chocolate Week! 

I feel as though every time I write about my bake-a-long posts, I start them off by justifying why they look so... questionable sometimes? When I read my own writing back this can sometimes come across as insecurity, so that's something I definitely need to try and move away from. I need to accept that my bakes look the way they do, and that's fine, and if I make mistakes then that's fine too, it's a learning curve!

With that in mind, let's get into Chocolate Week! And full disclosure, this is a mammoth of a post you might want to make sure you're sitting comfortably.  

"But James!" I hear you cry, "this week was the Botanicals Week episode of Bake Off! You're two weeks behind!". I'm a busy guy alright cut me some slack.  

In Chocolate Week, the bakers were tasked with creating a Chocolate Torte without any wheat flour for the Signature, Caramelised White Chocolate and Blackcurrant Cheesecakes for the Technical, and a chocolate box containing both chocolate cake and individual chocolates for the Showstopper! Given that my Bread Week showstopper didn't exactly go to plan, I decided to give the showstopper challenge a go again. Caramelised white chocolate is something I have recently experimented with (more on that with my Caramlised White Chocolate, Ginger, and Macadamia Tarts sometime soon!), so I ruled this one out!

As you can see, not exactly a box... 

I settled on a heart shaped red velvet cake, filled with a homemade cherry jam and decorated with Italian meringue buttercream, accompanied by both dark chocolate and cherry and white chocolate and raspberry fondant creams, and all contained within a white chocolate heart box! I probably ran away with the brief a little, but red velvet cake still has a mildly chocolatey flavour, and it's just up there with my favourite cakes! Granted, the Italian meringue and cherry jam aren't chocolately in the slightest, but indulge me on this one. 

And to make it even more interesting for myself... I aimed to make the whole thing vegan! I even gave the bake a name, "So Scarlet it was Maroon", after the line from Taylor Swift's Maroon (aka the best song on Midnights!). Let's break it down. 

Before I could even think about starting this project, I needed equipment! The only moulds I had that would do for making the individual chocolates were Christmas themed, and as much as I love love love Christmas, the cavities just weren't big enough. The second thing I needed was a heart shaped mould for the box, which I had to reorder after I mistakenly ordered a teeny tiny one!

Even planning the individual components took a while to plan, but once the plan came together the first thing to do was to prepare the vegan red velvet sponge. Vegan milk (I use soya milk) is warmed slightly and combined with apple cider vinegar, causing it to curdle and create vegan buttermilk. Meanwhile, flour, cocoa powder, caster sugar, bicarb, and baking powder are combined in a bowl, before the buttermilk is added alongside sunflower oil and red food colouring. The resulting batter is then baked in a heart shaped tin until a skewer comes out clean, and left to cool. 

The second step, of many, was to prepare the cherry jam filling, by simply combining jam sugar, cherries, and lemon juice, and boiling until the mixture wrinkles when dripped on to a freezing cold plate. The jam is then left to cool until thickened and cool enough to fill the cake. Definitely the easiest component of this bake! 

The cherry jam filling! Also, look
at the bottom for a glimpse of the box
base... 

Next up was the vegan Italian meringue buttercream. To prepare the buttercream, aquafaba is whisked along with cream of tartar until the mixture forms stiff peaks. Then, a sugar syrup that has been heated to 116 degrees C is gradually added, and the resulting meringue is then whisked until the mixture returns to room temperature. Then, vegan butter and white vegetable fat are both gradually added, along with some red food colouring, until the resulting buttercream is smooth and glossy.

With all three cake components ready, it was time to assemble the cake. After the levelling off the sponges, the three layers were sandwiched with the cherry jam and crumb coated with the Italian meringue buttercream. Once chilled, I added more buttercream to achieve a smoother finish. By this point though I already had my doubts about how this cake would fit in the box, as the cake was rather tall, but I pressed on regardless!

An attempt at more "regal" piping! 

I decided to try something new with the piping, experimenting with different nozzles in an attempt to produce something a little more "regal". I certainly wouldn't describe the finish as regal, but there's a first time for everything and it's not half bad for a first go! 

It was at this point that I encountered my first major obstacle. I ran out of buttercream before I could finish my decorating, but with the cost of ingredients lately I just couldn't justify buying fresh ingredients, so I resorted to using what I had available in the fridge. This meant using non-vegan butter in the buttercream, kissing goodbye to my dream of a vegan masterpiece... 

If the buttercream dilemma was a bump in the road, then what happens next was a real challenge. I decided to use the Moser Roth vegan blonde chocolate, as this was readily available to me and I assumed it was the same as vegan white chocolate. This chocolate though is definitely a little more beige/off white, which meant when it came to tempering I wasn't sure which temperatures to heat and cool the chocolate to in order to achieve the perfect shine and snapping consistency. After pouring the supposedly tempered blonde chocolate into the heart shaped mould, I could leave it to set.

What happens next all depends on successfully tempering the chocolate. If the chocolate is tempered, it will have a snapping consistency and should be easier to release from the moulds. If not tempered correctly though then the chocolate bends, and is difficult to work with. I'm telling you this because it turns out I hadn't actually tempered the chocolate correctly. As a result, the box and lid crumbled when turning out. Again, I couldn't justify splashing out on more ingredients, so I had to use some non-vegan white chocolate in its place. The vegan dream had crashed and burned, but the lid and box were much more successful. It was, however, no where near deep enough, and I didn't really have a box to work with...

The second attempt at a lid worked out
well! 

Just one more component remained (or two, seeing as they are different varieties), the individual chocolates! These were relatively simple, involving tempering both the dark and blonde chocolates (or attempting to, in the case of the blonde chocolate), pouring them into respective silicone moulds to create the shells. To create to fondant filling, icing sugar is slowly combined with hot water to create confectioners fondant, before glycerine, and respective flavourings were added. This fondant then fills the chocolate shells, and a last "layer" of chocolate is added to seal. Once set, the chocolates are turned out, and are ready to go! 

The individual fondant creams! 

At long last, we're coming to the end! The cake didn't quite (and by that I mean didn't at all), fit inside the bottom of the box shell, so that was something of a disaster already. Instead, I opted to pipe around the edges instead, but the lid was still impressive! 

Something I've been really keen to do during the bake-a-long is to try at least one new thing each week. And this week's new things were the vegan Italian meringue buttercream and the style of piping on the cake, as well as the preparation of the fondant creams! So, a mixed result again, but the taste was to die for, and I'm super proud of the showstopper-in-miniature I was able to produce! 

Trying something new and getting 
interesting results...

Next week, it's pastry, and with the benefit of hindsight I am able to say I've got something super special to write about for Pastry Week! 

Gibby x