Yummy Goodness

Well, I'm going to tell you about the fillings I made. For the chocolate cake I made Chocolate Almond Ganache (perfect for a chocoholic) and for the vanilla cake I made Vanilla Chocolate Chip Buttercream.

For the Ganache I used 2 pounds of chocolate (the recipe said to spend the money and get good chocolate well I used Bakers chocolate since the expensive stuff comes in smaller amounts and Bakers chocolate is good anyways!) 4 cups of heavy cream and Almond extract.

Start by chopping the chocolate until it's very fine. You'll have great arm muscles once you're done with this step! Hahaha. Here's once box chopped.

 8 ounces

 16 ounces (I'm not sure why this program keeps flipping my pictures and I don't know how to flip them back)

 24 ounces

 And 32 ounces!!

Heat the cream to almost boiling in the microwave. I also added my almond flavoring here, use as much or as little as you like.

 Pour the hot cream over the chocolate pieces.

 Let stand for 5 minutes (this is why you want the chocolate chopped as much as possible so that it will melt quickly).

 Now stir until smooth and you're done! Keep in refrigerator until you want to use it. It gets hard as it cools so what I ended up doing was putting the bowl in a hot water bath when I was ready to use it until it was a nice spreadable consistancy.

 Now for the Vanilla Chocolate Chip Buttercream:

1 pound confectioner's sugar

1/2 cup milk

1/8 to 1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp vanilla

2 sticks butter, cut into 1/2 inch slices

1/2 cup shortening

3/4 cup chocolate chips, crumbled in a food processor

One package vanilla instant pudding mix

Using the wisk attachment on your electric mixer mis the confectioner's sugar, pudding mix, chocolate chips, vanilla and milk at low speed until smooth.

Add butter one slice at a time until incorporated.

Add shortening and whip at highest speed 10-12 minutes until volume increases by at least 50%

And there you are. This needs to be stored in the fridge also and I did the same thing with a hot water bath for it when I was ready for it.

Now, I was going to do the fondant in this one too but Matt's awake so I'll do it in another one. That one couple potentially be a long one anyways. So, enjoy!!!