Thank you Rozanne and Carol , we’ve just tried it and I’m pleased with the taste as well!  Next time I make it I’ll be more confident.

Ohhhhhh Jeannette it’s superb.  I just love your cake and it makes my heart sing that we now have this recipe available to us for the measly price of £12.99.  It’s worth the price of the book alone.  What are you going to do with the left over glaze - the baby grands maybe?

JEANNETTE:
  Good evening to you Jeannette. I enjoyed seeing the photos of your good looking cake. I am sure it tasted as well as it appears.

  Good luck to you Jeannette & & keep up the good work & enjoy the rest of the day.

  ~CASS.

Brava, Jeanette, your cake is beautiful!!  Did you make the ganache as written, with the creme fraiche?  What did you think of it? 

Yes, “stroppy”- what a great word, it made me laugh!  Another great British-ism is “tuck in”, just love it.

Julie - 25 September 2009 08:15 PM

Patrincia, those look totally luscious and very chocolate-y!  Your daughter must be thrilled!  Wonderful photos, too.  Is this the lovely girl who baked you a birthday cake?  Happy Birthday to her!

I’m going to look for a squeeze bottle next time I’m at the store…

Oops, forgot to mention that the birthday girl is the younger daughter, not the one who baked the cake for my birthday.

Oh Jeannette - what a fantastic looking cake!  So glad you made it despite your anxiety (I’m the same way with something unfamiliar).  That glaze is amazing!!!!!  Any helpful tips or observations made during your experience that you’d like to pass along?

AnnieMacD - 27 September 2009 01:38 PM

Ohhhhhh Jeannette it’s superb.  I just love your cake and it makes my heart sing that we now have this recipe available to us for the measly price of £12.99.

Sounds like you got to purchase your book a bit cheaper than the US.  I paid $27, which I believe is roughly 16 or so pounds.  Anyone in Canada care to share what they paid?

$28.77 through Amazon. That was a sale price - introductory offer? Current sale price 30.21, reg price 47.95.

p.s. Prices in Canadian dollars, btw

$31.64 from Chapters. It was 34% off.

Jeannette, beautiful! I was intrigued by the video on Amazon’s site where it’s demonstrated. I get my book tonight I think, so I may try it as well for my contribution to the September bake-off, which may slip into October since it’s really busy at work. My next bride (and friend of mine) requested another trial of the chocolate oblivion for her kids to try, so I was thinking about doing that with the glaze.

Any opinion on whether I could pour it directly on the chocolate oblivion, or would it work much better on an in-between ganache?

Silke, the advantage of using a ganache layer before glazing is that the glaze will go over a smoother, more perfect surface, instead of showing all the bumps and slopes of the oblivion.

Ok, a bit last minute, but here’s my September contribution. It’s the 31. of September today, right? And I baked it yesterday….

I got my Heavenly Cakes, and of course I wanted to try something new! So I made the Valentines Cake - forgot the exact name. It’s the chocolate cake that’s saturated with chocolate ganache after baking. I made 1/2 the recipe and baked it in a 6” pan instead of a 9” heart shaped pan, and it worked out ok.

It baked fine, but it looked horrible after I poured the ganache on. It was not even, and blotchy… And the sides were bad, too. The recipe calls for raspberries on it which I think would be great. However, in order to help with the looks and to complement the chocolaty taste I decided to put an amaretto white chocolate ganache on. So - Tadaaaa - here it is.

It tastes fabulous btw. Very chocolaty, nice and dense and fudgy, but not too sweet. Really really good!

Lovely pictures, Silke, I particularly like the way you’ve decorated it!  Simple but attractive.  Good idea scaling the recipe down too, I shall use that idea as there are only two of us, a big cake is not always practical.

Thanks Jeanette. I decorated it this morning before running off to work (with it), so it was a bit of a rush job. I really wanted to try that lacquer glaze but I need some quiet time for it. Yeah, I like my 4” and 6” pans, I’m not a very big fan of cupcakes but like the small versions of the big cakes, that way you can decorate a bit nicer.

We gathered the 5 people from our office and our neighboring offices (all really small) and had a little afternoon coffee and cake. “Delicious” was what everybody said, not just me.

Utterly charming, Silke. Glad to hear about the taste test, too!