TGIF!

Yay! Thank God It's Friday. Although I no longer work now and can sleep till whatever time I want (theoretical, I normally wake up once OCT's up), I still look forward to weekends. We have been going to the cute Italian neighbourhood called The Hill for the past weeks, so it's very likely that we will make a trip there AGAIN tomorrow! Hooray to more toasted ravioli and cannoli! It has somehow become our weekend tradition now, taking over the picnic that we once love.

To spread my Friday happiness to people around me, I made a slightly more laborous cake for OCT's Friday lab meeting to wish his colleagues a "Happy Friday!" Although it's a bit silly, I can't content myself but to show the rest my enthusiasm about Friday!


I made a chocolate dacquoise cake that involved the making of a devil's food cake, 2 pieces of 9-inches chocolate meringue discs and a batch of chocolate swiss meringue buttercream. It could easily use up a whole day to put this cake together. Luckily for me, I had the meringue discs made few weeks ago. It was a Pierre Herme's recipe which I have initially intended to use for a mousse cake. But I change my mind on the last minute, like I always do. And make a Chocolate Dacquoise Cake from Tish Boyle's The Cake Book. So far, I only made a Cheesecake Brownie from this book since I got it as Christmas present.

Maybe this is not entirely Tish Boyle's recipe, because I made some modifications. It consists Pierre Herme's Chocolate meringue and Martha Stewart's chocolate swiss meringue buttercream. Confession time: I have always shy away from "temperature sensitive reaction'. Such as heating up eggwhite in a water bath until it reaches 160C. The temperature always hit 150C and refused to climb any further. Which made me mad and tired (from the constant whisking), and wonder if my thermometer is working. But once it gets past that stage, it's really satisfying to see the white being whisked magically into a pillowy marshmallow-like cream.

Oh I digress. I wanted to tell you about the chocolate swiss meringue buttercream. I used the recipe from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook simply because it yields lesser buttercream (4 cups of buttercream instead of 5 cups, as in The Cake Book). And used 1 stick of butter less. Still a total of 3 sticks of butter (almost a pound!!!) went into the buttercream which I later generouslly spread on the cake....I am all too glad to cut a tiny little piece to sample (aka quality control/assurance) before sending it off to OCT's lab.

ok, I know I should have cut an even smaller piece than this......

The cake has an intriguing texture, thanks to the 3 different components. The moist and intensely chocolate devil cake paired well with the chewy meringue and smooth buttercream. I especially like the devil's food cake, and wouldn't mind to make it again with other fillings. I think this is my favorite so far, after trying this and this.

Maybe it has been quite some time since I last made something nice for the lab, the cake was indeed very well received. A colleague asked OCT if he was going to bring the leftover home because she wanted to have a slice for dessert after dinner. Well, bless her! I can't be happier when people offered to polish up this cake!

What do you think of Chocolate Dacquoise Cake for breakfast? For me, I would rather choose bagel or scone or muffin or simply a cup of coffee........