♥White Chocolate Valentine's Gateau♥

Its that time of the year again when ♥ is in the air.All around there are Valentines day combo sales,restaurants have their own special 'love’ buffets and malls across have special contests going on for couples.Its hard to ignore the buzz.But then,why ignore it-when all the world’s celebrating,why not tag along?

Last year,we celebrated with a cake and Ajay was pleasantly surprised.This year,however I don’t think the surprise element is there.I bake whenever I feel like and a cake inside the fridge or one in the oven late night doesn’t excite him any more than it did last year.I have not been baking much off late and the reason to bake for Valentines day was enough to shake me off my slumber existence.

The recipe for this cake is from a Cake book I bought during my grocery shopping trip to Nilgiris.[Folks in Chennai,do check out the book section in Nilgiris,there are some amazing cookery books on their shelf].The main attraction point of this book was that it uses one basic cake mix for 50 different Cakes.This is the first recipe I am trying out and no prizes for guessing why I chose this particular cake:)

The cake was very light,surprisingly with all that butter and fluffy.The ganache gave me a bit trouble since it became runny.I whipped it up once and refrigerated it overnight which made the frosting job a bit easier.But if you ask me,I prefer the dark chocolate ganache,with its deep chocolate flavor.

White Chocolate ♥Valentine’s♥ Gateau
Recipe courtesy “ 1 Mix,50 Cakes” by Christine France

Ingredients

Plain white flour – 175 gms/6oz
Baking powder – 1 tbsp
Unsalted butter,softened – 175 gms/6oz
Caster Sugar – 175 gms/6oz
Eggs – 3,beaten
Vanilla extract – 1 tsp
White chocolate grated – 55gms/2oz [ I used equivalent amount of white chocolate chips]
Oil or butter for greasing the cake tin

Frosting

White chocolate – 200gms/7 oz,broken into pieces
Milk – 2 tbsp
Cream – 200 ml/7 fl oz

Method

Preheat oven to 170*C.
Grease /line two 8’ cake tins.[you could also use a heart-shaped tin to bake which would be more appropriate;)]
Sift the flour and baking powder together.
Cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy.
Beat in the eggs one at a time and add the vanilla extract.
Add the flour in 3-4 turns and beat well.
Fold in the grated chocolate[or white chocolate chips]
Divide the batter into the two pans and bake for 25-30 minutes or until risen,firm and golden brown.
Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes,then turn out onto a wire rack.

For the frosting,melt the chocolate with the milk in a double boiler OR in the microwave.
Remove from the heat and stir until smooth then leave to cool.
Whip the cream well and fold into the cooled chocolate mixture.
Fill and frost the cakes and decorate with sugar flowers and/or silver dragees.

Sending this cake to Nina of Confessions of a Bake-a-holic for her Valentine's day Special event!!