Cake
The cake wasn't too difficult; the worst part was having to wait for the cocoa/boiling water to cool so that I could make the cake. I learned my lesson from the yellow cake and baked two 8" and one 6" layers. They baked for 27 minutes. The cakes didn't seem to raise very high. Of course, that could be because I'm comparing it to the yellow-cake where I had overfilled the pans.
Raspberry Puree/Ganache
The first step for the raspberry ganache was to make raspberry puree from two bags of frozen raspberries. This was very time-consuming to make and strain to get all the grits out.
In all, I spent about 2.5 hours baking the cake and making the puree.
At lunch today, I made the raspberry ganache. Using Rose's food-processor method of making ganache was very easy. By the time I was ready for it, it had thickened too much, and I had to soften it a bit in the microwave.
Chocolate Neoclassic Buttercream
My first attempt at an egg-yolk icing. I melted the chocolate first and then put it in the fridge to cool down. What I didn't account for was how long I would need to beat the egg yolks and sugar syrup to reach room temperature. By the time I was ready for the melted chocolate, it had cooled a bit too much. This resulted in what I will consider chocolate-flecked icing. One thing to note is that the chocolate flecks don't work well when using a pastry bag - the chunks get stuck!
I will post tomorrow with the comments from my taste-testing crew!
Note that I am including two photos of the finished cake. I bought a pocket camera this weekend and I want to see how it compares with my 'real' camera. The first is from my Nikon and the second is from my new Kodak.
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