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Yellow Cake With Chocolate Ganache

I was in the mood for a cake but, quite frankly, I didn't want to spend forever making one. I started with the classic yellow cake recipe from The King Arthur Cookbook. To prepare, I cut paper rounds for the bottoms of the cake pans. Mom used to cut these out of paper bags from the grocery store. Of course, that was back in the twentieth century when grocery stores put your groceries in paper bags.

I creamed together the butter and sugar for a good five minutes.

I mixed in the eggs and buttermilk.

After some time in the oven, I pulled out these three eight-inch layers. After they cooked, I soaked them in simple syrup.

My next step was the chocolate ganache. I poured Guittard baking chocolate coins into boiling heavy cream. I normally use Alton Brown's proportions but I decided to try Ina Gartner's. The result was much stiffer, even with some added cream. As a result, I spread the ganache rather than pouring it on.

The result looked like this.

I realized too late that I should have used fruit preserves between the layers rather than chocolate. I decided to serve the cake with cherry preserves and hazelnuts from my trip to Seattle. Overall, this was not my most successful cake. But hey, it's still a cake.

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