Chocolate Pecan Cake

Photo: Mandy Mortimer

If you enjoy a pecan pie and you like chocolate sponge cake, this cake is for you.

A lovely light sponge cake is made very interesting indeed by adding dark chocolate and chopped pecans. Between the sponge cake layers is a thick butter filling made with chocolate and even more pecans. And where would a chocolate pecan cake be without a ganache topping, decorated with, yes – you guessed it, pecans.

A great cake for entertaining, this is a pretty rich cake so you only need to serve thin slices.

I read recently that eating pecans can lower cholesterol levels to an equivalent degree as taking medication would. Now I’m not saying this is health food by any stretch of the imagination, but there certainly seem to be some interesting nutritional things going on with pecans. Why wouldn’t you add them to cake? Does it balance out the chocolate cake element here? Probably not, but I think pecan cake is much more fun than eating a handful of pecan nuts by themselves. I can always justify eating cake…

This great Chocolate Pecan Cake is from the very talented Mandy Mortimer.

Chocolate Pecan Cake Recipe

 

Ingredients

For the Chocolate Pecan Sponge Cake:

• 8 Eggs, separated & at room temp
• 1½ cups Confectioner's Sugar/Icing Sugar
• 225g Unsalted Butter, softened (2 sticks)
• 230g Pecan Nuts, finely chopped
• 180g Dark Chocolate, melted
• 3 Tbsp Plain Flour
• 1½ tsp Vanilla Extract

For the Pecan Chocolate Filling:

• 60g Dark or Milk Chocolate
• ⅓ cup Sugar
• 230g Pecan Nuts, chopped
• ½ cup Milk
• 60g Unsalted Butter (1/2 stick)

For the Ganache:

• 170g Dark or Milk Chocolate
• 2 Tbsp Unsalted Butter
• 2 Tbsp Golden Syrup
• 3 Tbsp Milk

Instructions

1. For the full recipe go here: Chocolate Pecan Cake.

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