Chocolate with salt

It was my fathers in law birthday last Sunday and since he doesn't want us to buy him anything, I decided to bake him at least a birthday cake. Or let's better say, I baked two, but about that later.

First I was thinking of a "Death by chocolate" cake, but it's summer and lately extremely hot, so I preferred to make something else. The outcome was very similar to a Black forest cake, just lighter and fresher. And sugar free. At least the first one...

Why sugar free? We are working on our diet or let's better say on our healthy living and started cutting out all the sugar. I got hold of dextrose and rice syrup as a substitute and am trying to use only those from now on. I will post the whole story about changing our diet to sugar free some time soon.

Back to the cake(s). As I already mentioned, I used dextrose for the first cake instead of sugar and the cake turned out as sweet as any other cake I ever ate. The recipes I sourced for the sponge cake and the filling were both with sugar, so I just had to adjust the quantity, as dextrose is less sweet than sugar. According to an experienced blogger, the conversion from sugar to dextrose is 1:1.5 and I was more than happy with that. At the end, you have to find out for yourself. I also got the feeling, that depending on the manufacturer the dextrose is more or less sweet, but always less sweet than sugar. More about that in the next post.

First of all, dextrose reacts differently than sugar. By whisking the eggs up with the dextrose and later with sugar, the sugar - egg mix was definitely more fluffy and didn't collapse as quick, after I sifted the flour in. All in all I had to bake four sponge cakes. Yes, four.
My first sponge cake didn't rise as I hoped. I stuck to the recipe (in Polish language), but already while reading I had my doubts. I was wondering, why I was supposed to whisk the eggs up, only to take the whole air out by mixing in the flour. I waved scruples and rather conformed to the recipe.
My mixture collapsed immediately and I was wondering, how on earth that dough will ever rise.
My gut feeling was right and the dough hardly rose and only on one site. The taste was nice though and the final result was enjoyable, so it ended up in the freezer for future desserts.
With the second sponge cake, I sifted the flour in again and instead of mixing, I carefully folded it in. That looked more like an airy sponge cake dough. It came out fantastic.
So why did I make two cakes in first place? Definitely not to see the difference between sugar and dextrose, or to groove my sponge cake baking skills. It's more simple - we just couldn't resist to try the first cake and ended up eating it all.
But four sponge cakes? The third one and first with sugar, stuck to my silicon cake mould, and because it was very airy, it completely crumbled in my fingers. So there went my second sponge cake into the freezer and I had to bake again. Yay.

Some time back I bought agar agar, actually in order to make jam without sugar. Agar agar is a vegetarian/vegan gelatine obtained from algae. I wanted to use it for the cake, but had to discover, that it's unsuitable to bind cold fluids, as it has to be heated in order to start the binding process.
I've read, that for cold fluids you can use carob gum as a vegetarian alternative and I will try to get that. Not that I actually need to find an alternative to gelatine, as we are definitely not turning vegetarian, I'm just curious, if I could get it here in Namibia.
I used agar agar just to thicken up the cherry juice, only to finally try out how it works, but if you don't have agar agar, simply use the gelatine for it as well.

The cake has to rest for at least 6 hours to set properly.

Ingredients

For the chocolate sponge cake

5 eggs (medium)
360 g dextrose or 240 g sugar
100 g potato flour
75 g cake flour
2 - 3 tbsp cocoa powder
pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder

For the topping

1 glass of sour cherries (680 ml)
500 ml Greek yoghurt
250 ml cream
170 g dextrose or 100 g sugar
1 vanilla pod and/or 1 pkg vanilla sugar
1 pkg (10g) gelatine
1/4 tsp agar agar

dark chocolate for decoration

Preheat the oven to 160° (top and bottom heat, no fan!)

Layer baking paper on the bottom of a springform pan and grease the sides lightly.

For the sponge cake, whisk up the eggs with dextrose (or sugar) till the mixture turns white ( for about 10 minutes).
Mix the flours, cocoa powder and baking powder and sift into the egg mixture. Fold it very carefully into the egg foam, till well combined.

Pour the dough into the prepared springform pan and bake for 30 - 45 minutes (depending on your oven). From 30 minutes on, I would test the pastry every 5 minutes with a toothpick for its consistency. The toothpick comes out dry, when the sponge cake is ready.
Take it out of the oven and leave it to cool. The cooler the pastry, the easier it is to cut.

Drain the cherries and catch the juice.
In a small pot, bring 175 ml of the juice to boil and add 1/4 tsp of agar agar. Cook for an other 2 minutes, before turning off and leaving to cool and lightly set at room temperature. If the juice thickens too much ( it still has to be pourable), you just need to reheat it and add some more cherry juice.
If you're working with gelatine at this stage, don't bring the juice to boil. Just heat it up a bit and mix then with 1tsp of gelatine, before putting to fridge for half an hour to set a bit.

Mix now the yoghurt with dextrose (or sugar) and the seed of  one vanilla pod (and/or vanilla sugar). Whip the cream and add to the yoghurt.

Dissolve the gelatine in 3 tbsp of hot water, mix with 3 tbsp of your yoghurt mixture, before mixing into the rest of it.

Remove the cake from the springform pan and divide with a string into two equally thick slices.

Now you will need the springform pan again. Put one of the pastry slices at the bottom, spread 2/3 of the cherries out and cover with half of your yoghurt mixture.
Place now the second slice of the sponge cake on top, pour the rest of the yoghurt mixture on it and spread evenly.
Pour the thickened cherry juice onto the yoghurt and spread all over the top.

Decorate the top of the cake with the rest of the cherries and rasp dark chocolate all over.



Put into the fridge for  at least 6 hours or over night.


Remove from the springform pan and

Enjoy!