Dessert: Chocolate Mint Smith Island Cake

Your favorite chocolate cake will work, but here's ours. For the sake of consistency in high volume production, and finding the perfect cake to be baked pencil thin, we started off with a quality cake mix. To make this cake our own and to make it taste ev

Ingredients

1 box Chocolate Devil's Food Cake Mix
2 tbsp. buttermilk
7 oz. large eggs
2/3 c. water
2/3 c. oil
7 oz. chocolate ganache (recipe below)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray or grease 2 8-inch or 9-inch cake pans and line bottoms with parchment paper.
Make the ganache: Mix heavy cream and corn syrup and heat just to a boil. Pour over chocolate pieces in a bowl. Let stand a few minutes for the cream to start melting the chocolate. Mix until smooth and glossy. Set aside.
Make the cake: Combine cake mix, buttermilk, and eggs for 1 minute on medium speed, or 2 minutes by hand. Scrape the bowl and add the water and oil. Mix for one minute on medium speed, or two minutes by hand.
Add melted ganache (7 ounces) and mix until incorporated, making sure to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl between mixing.
Fill each pan with about 2/3 cup of cake batter and spread evenly. (This is very important as you want an even layer. An uneven layer will yield a cake that isn't evenly baked and will also increase difficulty when stacking the cake.)
Make the buttercream: Whisk egg whites and sugar together and gently heat over a double boiler until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture reaches 120 degrees F.
Remove from heat and whip until the bowl feels cool to the touch. Add the softened butter a few pieces at a time. Continue to mix until the mixture is incorporated and fluffy. Add flavorings, and mix until combined. Taste and adjust as necessary.
Assemble the cake: Once cake layers are cool, begin icing and stacking. If thin layers are desired, slice cooled cakes in half horizontally to create more layers. Spread a thin, even layer of chocolate ganache onto the first cake layer. (Works best when ganache is set at room temperature. It should have the consistency of spreadable icing).
Spread a thin, even layer over buttercream over the ganache. Repeat with cake and icings until all the layers are used up. We like to measure our cakes to 3 inches tall. Refrigerate until set.
Coat the outside of the cake with the mint buttercream. If desired, grind chocolate sandwich cookies into crumbs. Coated the sides of the cake with crumbs. Decorate the top of the cake with chocolate syrup.

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