This was actually another accidental cake! I had been wanting to make one of these checkerboard cakes for a while, and one day, I realized I had all the ingredients ready to go in my freezer, so in essence it went pretty quickly. I often make cake disks and use them for cakes I'm making, and freeze extra disks for later use. So I had 2 chocolate cake disks and 2 vanilla cake disks in the freezer. All that was needed was the cream and that went pretty easily since I also had some chocolate mousse frosting I had made previously. This was my first attempt, and although it was far from perfect (leaning to one side, lol), it turned out much better and easier than I expected. For tips, I would say 1) have some good cake cutters (I used glass cups and it's not ideal) 2) spread the frosting fairly thinly in between the layers in order to see the checkboard pattern 3) if you freeze cake disks or frosting ahead of time, it is a time saver, in a delulu kind of way 4) the wow fact...
Whenever I'm craving a special, creamy, silky, chocolate dessert, I make this silk tarte. First, I made a chocolate crust. Then it was as easy as making a chocolate ganache by melting chocolate and blending it with a milk and cream mixture. Here's the recipe. Chocolate crust : 1/2 cup (110 g) unsalted butter (softened) 1 cup (125 g) flour (or gluten-free flour blend with xanthan gum) 1/4 cup (30 g) almond flour 1/3 cup (60 g) confectioners sugar 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder 1 egg yolk 1 teaspoon vanilla 1/2 teaspoon sea salt Knead butter and flours together, add sugar, cocoa, vanilla, salt and egg. Knead about 2 minutes, to get a non-sticky texture (does not stick to finger). Cover and allow to cool in refrigerator for at least 2 hours. Preheat oven 175°C (350° F). Line a pan (or individual tarte moulds) with parchment paper, roll the dough on a flat surface and flatten to an 1/8 inch thickness, cut out round forms, then transfer to pan....