White layer cake with chocolate cream filling

This cake marks a departure for me.  I fancied making a layer cake today.  Following the outcome of my last cake from the Hummingbird recipes (the carrot cake) I decided to trust my creativity today and combine two recipes.  To me, the Hummingbird frosting is simply too sweet and powerful.  I find it takes away from the lovely taste of the cake.  So I chose to replace the frosting with a more traditional French alternative used in a lot of European pastry making: cream. 

I had kept notes of a recipe from French cake maker Eric Lanlard from one of his TV shows where he essentially prepares a chocolate whipped cream that is whipped to the point where it almost becomes butter.  Hard (bar) chocolate is added to the cream by mixing it first with warm cream to make a ganache-like mixture that can then be incorporated to and mixed with whipped cream.  With an electric whisk it takes no time to make.  Mind you, as I learned today, make sure to use double and not single cream (my single cream never whipped … after 45 minutes of trying – the double cream whipped in 5 …).  For my cake I used the basic vanilla cupcake recipe from the Hummingbird and multiplied the quantities by 3 so that I could have 3 layers to my cake. 

 The result is really delicious!  The white cake is moist and creamy (it must be that milk added to the batter).  The chocolate cream has no sugar and cuts through and balances the sweetness of the cake.  The result is truly satisfying.  Would be interesting to see what happens if the vanilla extract for the sponge were to be replaced with actual vanilla beans.

With this new cream mixture in the place of the American frosting I am so much happier with the results.  I definitely think I am going to use it more from now on.  I already have ideas how with a whipped cream base instead of chocolate I could add fruit jams, or pureed chestnuts, to make a range of very different tasting cakes simply by changing the filling.

It is one of my most professional looking cakes I think too.  I made a stencil of my dog to decorate it with and am thinking of using that technique more in the future as it gives the cake a true sense of identity. 

Ingredients used (will be doing this from now on):
Cake
360 g Plain Flour
420 g Caster Sugar
4 ½ Teaspoons of Baking Powder
Pinch of Salt
120 g Unsalted Butter
360 ml Whole Milk
3 Eggs
¾ Teaspoon of Vanilla Extract

Chocolate Cream
100 ml Single Cream
100 g Dark 70% Chocolate
600 ml Double Cream