Chocolate soufflé moccha cake

You might want to skip this one if you're on a diet. This is a cake I improvised during a weekend. It came out alright, so here it goes.

First I made a chocolate soufflé:

• 9 eggs, separated
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1 pound dark chocolate
• 1/2 cup butter

Butter and flour a tall round baking pot. Melt the chocolate with the butter in a bain-marie (or in the microwave, carefully) and set aside. Beat the yolks with most of the sugar (keep a spoon for the meringue) until they turn ivory. Beat the whites into a meringue with 1 spoon of sugar. Fold the chocolate in the yolk mixture, and then gently fold the meringue in, careful to keep most of the air. Move to the buttered baking dish, and cook in a medium hot oven until it's slightly jiggly in the center. Let it cool, unmold on a plate, and refrigerate overnight.

The next morning, I made some pastry cream:

• 1 cup of milk
• 1 cup of cream
• vanilla extract (or bean, if you have)
• 4 spoons of flour
• 2 egg yolks
• half a cup of sugar
• half a cup strong coffee
  

Set a pot with a cup of milk and a cup of cream over low flame. Add some vanilla, half the sugar and strong coffee. At the same time, beat one egg yolk with the rest of the sugar until ivory. Sift four tablespoons of flour in, and mix. Keep stirring and add the hot (but not boiling) milk and cream. Move to the pot over low flame and stir until it thickens. Set aside to cool, and mix often to avoid a crust. I didn't, so I had to peel the crust off when it was cold and eat it, sadly.

For garnish, I made a ganache and some whipped cream:

• 250g heavy cream
• 250g dark chocolate
• 1 spoon of confectioner's sugar
  

Whip half the cream with the confectioner's sugar until it formed soft peaks for the chantilly cream. Warm the rest up and mix with the chocolate, stirring until all the chocolate melts and the mix becomes smooth.

Then, bring it all together. Using a long serrated knife, slice the tall soufflé into three layers. Alternatively, use a normal knife to make a shallow cut all around at one third of the height, wrap the cake using a piece of thread so that it's in the cut, and pull the two ends of the string to make a very even cut. Repeat for the other layer.

Place the widest layer on a wide dish and spoon half the mocha cream on top. Put the next cake layer over, and top with the rest of the mocha. Finish with the third layer of cake, then garnish with the ganache. Pour a spoon of ganache on the top of the cake, and push it around with a spatula to cover it. Keep pouring one spoon of ganache at a time on top of the cake, and push it around with a spatula to drip evenly around the cake. Wipe any excess ganache from the bottom of the plate, make sure the cake is coated on all sides, and refrigerate for the ganache to set. After a few hours, garnish the cake on top with the whipped cream.

Overall it was nice and very chocolaty. The soufflé was nice instead of an actual cake, even though it doesn't have flour, because it was moist and hadn't deflated. The coffee flavor combines well with the chocolate and stops it from being overwhelming. I didn't use too much sugar and the chocolate was 75% cocoa, so it wasn't very sweet either, just right. If I was to change anything, next time I might try to get a little cognac somewhere in there. It is excellent with a bitter espresso.