I love baking cakes for my friends’ birthdays. It’s always my gift to them. I’ve noticed that the cakes get more elaborate as each birthday passes. For my friend Ned’s birthday, we got him the $2 Cheesecake from Trader Joe’s! Then for my roommate’s bday, I made her a Dulce de Leche cake. For my friend Derrick’s birthday, I decided to take on the most difficult cake challenge yet: Martha Stewert’s Chocolate Crepe Cake. I’m not sure what prompted me to take on this challenge, given that it was midterm week and that I had never made crepes before. But, I think I just wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. After 7 hours and many burnt fingers, I finally succeeded in my feat. The work paid off, it was delicious and Derrick along with my other friends loved it. So if you like taking on challenges, try this one, I promise the results will be very worth your while.
For this recipe, I used Martha Stewart, incorporated ideas from this blog and also found a pastry cream recipe from The Joy of Cooking. I used Martha’s recipe for crepes – which turn out wonderfully fluffy and tasty. However, there must be a healthier recipe for them because this one calls for 1 ½ sticks of butter(not good for my diet)! I also used her glaze recipe. I attempted to make candied hazelnuts, but I seriously need to work on my sugar art skills. My first batch of sugar syrup turned out well, but hardened before I could make enough. The second and third batches were a disaster – the sugar crystallized, hardened, and stuck to the pan – it was a bitch to clean. Overall, the candied hazelnuts were an EPIC FAIL. If you guys have any tips on how to work with sugar, let me know!
I like the orange chocolate idea from What’s For Lunch, Honey? However, the measurements for the pastry cream and what not used the metric system, and I didn’t know how to convert! So I used a recipe from Joy of Cooking. The candied Orange Peels turned out wonderfully, and I recommend making extra to save as a garnish for other desserts.
So here is my version of Martha Stewart’s Darkest Chocolate Crepe Cake. I hope you enjoy it!
For the Chocolate Crepes:
· 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces, plus melted for pan
· 8 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
· 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
· 1/3 cup sugar
· 1/2 teaspoon salt
· 2 1/2 cups whole milk, room temperature
· 6 large eggs, room temperature
· 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
· Bring 1/4 cup water to a rolling boil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Add butter, 1 piece at a time, whisking to combine after each addition. Remove from heat; stir in chocolate until completely melted. Set aside.
· Whisk together flour, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Whisk together milk, eggs, and vanilla in another medium bowl. Gradually add milk mixture to flour mixture, whisking until smooth. Add chocolate-butter mixture, whisking until smooth. Pour through a fine sieve into an airtight container; discard lumps. Refrigerate at least 2 hours or up to overnight.
· Lightly coat an 8-inch crepe pan or nonstick skillet with melted butter. Heat over medium heat until just starting to smoke. Remove pan from heat; pour about 2 tablespoons batter into pan, swirling to cover bottom. Reduce heat to medium-low; return pan to heat. Cook, flipping once, until edges are golden and center is dry, about 30 seconds per side.
· Slide crepe onto a plate. Repeat process with remaining batter, coating pan with butter as needed. Crepes can be refrigerated, covered, up to 1 day.
For the
Ingredients:
1/3 Cup Sugar
2 tbsp AP Flour
2 tbsp Cornstarch
4 large egg yolks (save the whites to make a healthy egg white omelet that will make you feel less guilty after eating this cake!)
1 1/3 cup milk
¾ Tsp Vanilla Extract
Orange Zest (add as much as you like!)
In a medium bowl, beat sugar, glour, cornstarch and eggs yolks on high speed until thick and pale yellow, about 2 minutes.
Meanwhile, simmer milk on a medium saucepan
Gradually pour about 1/3 of the hot milk into the egg mixture. Go slowly because the hot milk will scramble the eggs if you go too fast. After the eggs have been tempered, pour the rest of the milk in.
Scrape the egg/milk mixture back into the saucepan, add the orange zest and cook on medium heat, whisking constantly and scraping the bottom and corners of the pan to prevent scorching. . Cook until the custard is thick and bubbling. When it comes to a boil, cook for 45-60 seconds more. Then take off the heat, scrape into a clean bowl and add the vanilla extract.
If the custard is too thick, add more milk and whisk until you get the consistency that you like.
For the Candied
Go to this site: They can explain it much better than I can
For the Chocolate Glaze
Makes about 2 cups
- 1 1/4 cups heavy cream
- 1 tablespoon light corn syrup
- Pinch of salt
- 10 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
- Bring cream, corn syrup, and salt to a boil in a medium-heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. Remove from heat. Add chocolate; swirl pan to cover completely with cream. Let stand about 5 minutes. Stir until smooth. Let cool completely.
To assemble the Cake
After you have made the crepes and pastry cream, you can start putting together the cake. I made the glaze after I finished putting the layers together.
Place one crepe on whatever platform you choose. I flipped over a pie dish and covered it with wax paper. Then spread it with some cream. Continue doing this until you have used all your crepes – there will be about 30 layers. When I made my crepes, there were some that looked a lot less than perfect. But I didn’t let them go to waste, I used them as fillers between the good crepe layers. The ones that were too ruined to salvage were happily eaten by my roommates and I=)
Then, make your glaze and pour about half of it over the cake. Put it in the fridge for about 20 minutes to allow it to firm up. Then take it out and pour the second layer over it. I did two layers of glaze because the first one was to cover the imperfections and the second one was a nice perfect top coat.
Decorate however you like! I used the candied orange peels in the middle and then surround them with toasted, crushed hazelnuts and the only 2 candied hazelnuts that actually looked good.
White chocolate would look wonderful drizzled over this as well.
Move the cake to a nice cake plate and serve - unless you would like to leave it sitting on a mountain of chocolate glaze.
I didn’t tell derrick what was inside the cake, so you can imagine how surprised he was to find, not a 2 layer cake, but a 30 layer one!
And now some beauty shots:
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