Chocolate Mocha Cake with Whipped Cream Frosting - A Wedding Anniversary Cake

Yet another Wedding Anniversary, five years of togetherness - Yes we have been wedded for five years. Seems like it was just yesterday, It is so wonderful when you lay back and think of the days passed by. Life takes new turn every now and then some expected and a lot unexpected. 'Sree' as I call him though a Keralite is a typical 'Mumbain' says my cousin sister because of the way he speaks Malayalam ;-)

Sree- brought up in Mumbai, lived in USA for quite long time is a typical street smart professional and myself  a simple homely girl who do not give up in any challenges of life. I'm a clean freak who likes to see things well arranged neat and tidy, he- like a school boy who just throws his backpack, shoes and stuffs when he is back from work and often vanishes from home for which ever game he is called for. I cannot bear much loud noise but the tele volume for the football games at our home is louder than in a musical concert auditorium. Sounds funny right??? Yes we are total different blend in many perspective buttttt just the same when we wind up our thoughts and suggestions. My MIL says - I cannot support 'one' of you since you both share the same logic in two different ways'. And I feel may be we are not perfect individual on our own but yea we had been perfect for each other :-)

I'm thankful to myself for felling in love with the language 'Hindi' right from my school and preferred taking the same as second language in my 12th and Bachelors. Thanks to all those Hindi soaps and movies as well which helped me talk this language very fluently or else to stand up with him would have been really tough at the initial days of our marriage. When we were newly wed I told him once to make it a habit to speak only Malayalam at home and he had his eyebrows up as he thought why would he need to make it a practice since I was pretty much comfortable speaking Hindi. He burst into laugh when I said 'I think it would be easy for me to teach you Malayalam rather than teaching my granny Hindi now in her 70's '. And yes, he learned talking in Malayalam quite well and insist our son to speak our language at home. As said my grand-moms were really happy on our first India trip since they were able to communicate with him so well, my grandma just love to talk a lot and he was/is the best companion for her.

I know I'm making it quite boring and I know I am not good in write ups so let me come back to this cake recipe. This is a very basic mocha-chocolate cake with simple whipped cream frosting. I used some left over chocolate ganache instead of chocolate/cocoa powder since I wanted to finish them off. I made an 8 inch round cake and a small round cake just to give a wedding cake look (even though it do not reallyyyyy look like one ;-) ) I was planning to make it a fondant cake but then after a lot of reading I felt the best frosting for fondant cake is butter cream frosting and  fondant remains perfect on it(that is just my understanding). Nothing against butter cream frosting but I always feel it very heavy compared to whipped cream or cream cheese frosting and I've seen my kids and husband not really enjoying them when we go to many birthday parties while eating all those theme cakes which normally uses butter cream frosting. So I dropped the plan of making the fondant cake and end up making this lovely mocha cake. So let me put up this recipe for you all, bake it for any festive. Enjoy!!!!!!

Mocha Chocolate Cake:-

Ingredients Used:-

1. All purpose flour - 1 1/4 cups
2. Baking powder - 1 tbsp
3. Sugar - 1 cup
4. Eggs  - 3
5. Left Over Chocolate Ganache - ½ cup(You can use 3 tbsp cocoa powder or melt 1/4 or more chocolate chips or any choc in MW and use it as well).
6. Instant Coffee Powder - 2 tsp(I used Nescafe Sunrise)
7. Softened Butter - ½ cup
8. Water - ½cup 
9. Walnut chopped - ½ cup(optional, I used them to decorate the sides of the cake. u can use slivered almonds or anything of ur choice)

Whipped Cream Frosting

1. Heavy whipping Cream - 1½ cups
2. Icing Sugar - ½ cup
3. Vanilla essence - 1 tsp

Preparation Method:-

Whip Cream Frosting:- 

• The bowl in which you are going to whip the cream should be clean and dry. Refrigerate the bowl and whisk for 30 minutes before using if possible.
• Place the whipping cream, vanilla essence in the bowl and beat till the cream start to thicken. Add the sugar little by little and beat till they are thick and stiff peaks form. Cover with a cling wrap and chill till they are ready to use.

Cake Preparation and Assembling:-

• Pre-heat the oven to 350 Degree Fahrenheit. Grease an 8 inch round baking pan and another small round baking pan and set aside(Any size lesser than 6 inch should be fine, I used a smaller one though).
• Microwave water to hot and add the instant coffee powder. Stir well to dissolve the powder fully.Set aside to cool completely.
• Sift together flour and baking powder and set aside.
• In a wide bowl add the sugar and butter and beat them from low to medium speed till they become creamy. 
• Add eggs one by one and beat them in medium speed to creamy. Add the coffee and chocolate ganache(or melted chocolate) and beat just for a while to blend everything well and mix evenly.
• Add the sifted flour little by little and beat in low speed till everything is blended well and mixed without any lumps(Add some milk at room temperature if the batter is too thick).
• Pour the batter to the greased pans and gently pat the pan on the counter top to remove air bubbles formed if any.
• Bake it for 45- 50 minutes or until a cake tester or sharp knife inserted comes out clean.
• Take out and let it cool completely. With a serrated knife cut off the top bulged out part carefully from both cakes to get a perfect flat leveled cake to make frosting easy. 
• Place the big cake on the bottom and spread the frosting on top and sides. Top up with the small cake and spread the frosting on its top and sides as well. 
• Decorate them as you wish, I used the open star #16 tip to make those small decoration and I applied chopped walnuts on the sides ;-)  I'm not into much cake decoration yet :)

Sending this to Chocolate Fest event hosted by Sravani @ Srav's Culinary Concepts, ABC Series: Desserts event hosted by Ramya @ Ramya's Recipe and since I used leftover Ganache in this I'm sending this to Cooking with Leftovers hosted by Veena @ Veg Junction 

Also sending this to Amy's Food Corner for her Decorating Challenge # 3 - Valentine's Day Ideas, Sweet Luv @ Zesty Palette