CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH DARK CHOCOLATE GANACHE

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup unsweetened cocoa

1 1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 sticks margarine

2 heaping cups sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

1 1/4 cups buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 350

mix flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.

beat the butter with the sugar  add eggs, one at a time,  vanilla

alternately fold in the dry ingredients and the buttermilk, until just incorporated

Pour into greased and floured bundt pan, and bake for 45 minutes, don’t over bake.

Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes,

then turn it out onto a plate, let cool completely.

top with Dark Chocolate ganache

Here is where the fun begins. I will admit I did have a little trouble at first because the chocolate did not want to melt in my double broiler as you will see in my pics, and I did not have any heavy cream on hand but I made do with what I had on hand and I must say I was really pleased…  The chocolate began to melt with my substitution of heavy cream for my husbands Vanilla Coffee Creamer, but it was Sugar free and that bitter chocolate didn’t taste any better at all.. so we had to improvise and that I did with a some help from sweetened condensed milk, a little White Corn Syrup and some vanilla did the trick.. the chocolate came out dreamy. Not as thick as a regular ganache but definitely a winner.  From this point on I was feeling good about my chocolate challenge.

DARK CHOCOLATE GANACHE

8 oz of Dark Bitter Chocolate (Any grade dark chocolate will do but this was made using 85% dark bitter chocolate  Moser Roth that no one wanted so I made it into a ganache)

1 cup Vanilla or Hazelnut  Coffee Creamer  add in tsp vanilla (or can use heavy cream with tsp vanilla in it)

1 (16 oz) can sweetened condensed milk

1 – 2 tbsp White Karo Syrup

Directions

Put chocolate in Food Processor and grind fine as possible

I ended up with about a cup

Get all ingredients ready, and use a sauce pot with water under halfway and a good heat resistant mixing bowl to make yourself a double broiler

Add Chocolate to mixing bowl in double broiler and stir a bit to soften.. (at first it doesn’t want to melt, this chocolate has basically no milk content)

So next I add my Creamer that has my vanilla already poured in with it,

it slowly starts to melt

make sure you stir all those little grains..

stir and  let come to a slow melt add in a Tbsp or two of White Corn Syrup

you will notice the dark coming back .. it is deep and beautiful but still very bitter.. time to sweeten it

Stir Stir Stir, keep heat at Medium not too high

add in your Sweetened Condensed Milk

Stir

Let cool a bit then ladel over cake.

let cake set up then ladel over again, repeat..

you will have a little bit of chocolate left

the rest fo your chocolate can be used as chocolate sauce for ice cream or what not, will keep air tight in fridge a good while.