Chocolate gingerbread cake

Ingredients for 1 servings:

• 3 eggs (M)
• 100 g sugar, fine
• 1 bag of vanilla sugar
• 3 ½ g gingerbread spice
• 10 g cocoa powder, unsweetened
• 1 tsp, leveled baking powder
• 1 pinch of salt
• 80 g flour
• 250 g milk chocolate, 43% cocoa content
• 1 bag(s) of vanilla sugar or 1 – 2 tbsp sugar
• 200 ml cream
• some plum jam
• e.g. speculatius or brittle for decoration
• n. B. White chocolate coating for decorating

Instructions

Working time approx. 45 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 25 minutes; Total time approx. 1 hour 10 minutes

Winter/Christmas cake

Preheat the oven to 180°C (conventional). Line the bottom of a 20 cm springform pan with baking paper; do not grease the sides. Sponge cake: Beat the room-temperature eggs with sugar and vanilla sugar on high speed until frothy and the mixture turns beige-white and has tripled in size. The consistency should be quite thick and runny. This can take a good ten minutes with a food processor, or 20 minutes with a hand mixer. Combine all solid ingredients and sift them into the mixture. Fold in with a whisk. Do not beat or stir vigorously. Pour the batter into the springform pan and pull up the edges. Bake on the lowest rack for about 25-30 minutes. Shortly before the end of the baking time, use a skewer to test whether the batter is cooked. The batter must cool in the pan, then carefully loosen the edges and remove the baking paper from the bottom. Ganache: Chop the chocolate into medium-sized pieces. Heat the cream in a saucepan. Once boiling, pour it over the chocolate chips along with the vanilla sugar and whisk until smooth and lump-free. The ganache needs to cool now. This will happen quickly in the refrigerator with this amount, but it shouldn’t set and should still flow easily from the spoon. Cut the cooled sponge cake into three equal layers and spread a little plum jam on each layer. Whisk the ganache until fluffy. It should become lighter in color and have a consistency similar to whipped cream; this may take a while. Now start layering with the middle layer. Spread the ganache about 0.5–1 cm thick over the plum jam, right up to the edges. Continue with the “lid,” then spread it again and place the “base” on top as the top, straight edge. Immediately cover the cake with a thin layer of the remaining ganache. If desired, decorate the edges with some crumbled speculaas cookies, brittle, or similar, and cover the surface with white chocolate coating. The piping decoration made from white chocolate coating requires some practice, but you can also use ready-made chocolate decorations; dots of cream also look pretty. The cake tastes best when it’s left to stand for a day, but it can of course be eaten immediately. Variations: – omit the spices – for a light sponge, simply replace cocoa with flour – use a different jam to spread the layers, or soak them in liqueur, schnapps, juice, etc.