Rob's Birthday - Coconut Rough Cake with Snack chocolate deco

Today is Rob's birthday. Rob is my "partner in crime" at work, being the only other lawyer in the company.

I am privy to inside information that Rob likes coconut roughs (pieces of chocolate mixed with coconut), and the gooey fruity flavours in Cadbury Snack chocolate. Accordingly, my ideas for a birthday cake for Rob were born of this knowledge. I had Loretta Sartori's great recipe for a flourless chocolate cake from my Baking Essentials class that I thought I could use as a base for a coconut rough cake, and throw in some coconut to imitate a coconut rough. I tied in the Snack chocolate as decorations on top of the cake.

The overall effect is not as elegant as I might have liked because (a) I was a bad ganache maker, and overboiled my cream while I was chopping my chocolate, leading to a very thick, fudgy ganache instead of a smooth shiny one; and (b) just when I thought nothing could go wrong, when I removed the decorated cake from the wire rack, I broke it in half! This is where the fudgy ganache came into its own, because I was able to plaster over the damage, and no-one was any the wiser. It just led to a rougher finish on the cake, because the ganache had started to set by the time I started the plaster job. It also meant that once the cake was on the serving dish, I could not move it. It's all about appearances!!!! And it still tasted good - everyone liked this cake.

To make your very own coconut rough cake, you will need:

250g dark chocolate, chopped
200g unsalted butter, diced
150g sugar
200g almond meal
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
6 eggs, separated
30ml coffee
50g sugar

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius, and grease and line a 26cm cake tin.

Melt the butter over a bain marie, then add the choclate and stir through until melted. Add the 150g sugar and the almond meal and cocnut, and stir through. Remove the mixture from the heat, then stir through the egg yolks and coffee.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites to the soft peak stage, then whisk through the 50g of sugar until glossy and smooth. Fold the egg whites gently into the chcolate mixture until just combined, then pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake for approximately an hour until cooked through. Remove the cake from the oven and allow it to cool completel in the tin on a wire rack (it is fragile!!).

Decorate the cooled cake with your favourite ganache recipe and whatever else takes your fancy. Once the ganache has set, serve and enjoy. It is quite a rich cake, so you will only need small pieces.