TWD: Chocolate Caramel Chestnut Cake

I've started a blogging and baking group, called Tuesdays With Dorie. Each week we bake something from "Baking from My Home to Yours" by Dorie Greenspan. It's a gorgeous cookbook, and while I've been following but not baking along with this group for som etime, have been drooling over some of the things they bake. So, an opportunity opened and I'm in!

Unfortunately, not knowing that we can switch up the order of the recipes during November, I baked what is in my opinion one of the most difficult cakes. I would have saved this one for Thanksgiving week, or another special occasion.

Anyway, the recipe was pretty much a fail. I used hazelnut spread instead of the chestnut spread called for in the recipe and chopped hazelnuts instead of the chestnuts I could not find in my grocery store. The cake turned out fine, and tastes like a slightly nutty chocolate cake. I fell in love with the chocolate caramel ganache used for the filling, but would not have added so much butter in the final step. It is very thick in the cake, almost like a candybar in the middle. The last step is the glaze, and this really didn't work for me. It's basic components are cream, sugar and chocolate. The recipe said it was supposed to thicken to a spreading consistency at room temperature and it never did. So, I put it in the fridge and it still didn't thicken enough. When I attempted to glaze the cake, it ran off, leaving a very thin layer on the cake.

We've eaten some of it, but because the glaze did not thicken enough to cover the ganache the cake really doesn't look good enough to share. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement, as this is the first week of something I was looking so forward to. The other recipes for November look fallish and yummy, so next week will be a fresh start-stay tuned!

Stop by here to see what the others have baked up, or to read more about TWD!