Toffee Ganache

This cake was for my brother-in-law's 35th birthday. When we were brainstorming about what to do for his cake, he kept referring back to Dad's birthday cake and how much he liked it. (This is the Big D's Birthday cake that was an earlier post on my blog) Well, I wanted to make it unique for him so I tweaked it just a little. 

His favorite cake is yellow with chocolate frosting, but he also really like toffee so I combine all of those into a few rich layers. Each tier of the cake was torted into 3 layers of yellow cake separate by a layer of rich chocolate ganache and toffee bits. The ganache was made from scratch and chilled over night to help hold it's form as a filing and not squish out the sides under the weight of the different layers. Then a generous layer of toffee bits were add and another layer of yellow cake. 

The frosting was a coco buttercream enhanced with a slight toffee flavor and colored two shades of brown for contrast. The decoration technique is a really fun one to do. You create a vertical line of frosting dots and  the with the back side of a spoon, slightly push down and drag to the right. You then place your next row of dots over the "tails" of the previous row and repeat. When finished, it creates a beautiful layered look that is clean and classic. 

The 35 was added as the finishing touch to honor Seth's big birthday. I poured white chocolate into an oval cookie cutter and let in harden. When the chocolate was firm, I smoothed it by scrapping off the imperfections with a smooth metal spatula in long sweeping motions that started and stopped at each end of the shape. I didn't want there to be any grooves which is why I did not us a common kitchen knife with a serrated edge. I then used my leftover frosting from the bottom tier and piped on a 35 and  a dotted border. The chocolate piece itself was adhered with a healthy amount of the tan frosting from the top tier so the heavy chocolate piece would not slide off the side of the cake. 

I am soooo happy with how this cake turned out and most importantly...the birthday boy loved it too! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SETH!!!