Happy Birthday Lex!

Today was the hubby's 34th. I did my best to make it special with some treats throughout the day.

First a good ol' plate of homefries with a red bell pepper and a leek along with a little pile of pesto tofu scramble with some kale and a tomato.
Next I decided to go for RayRay's Peanut Butter Cinnamon Rolls. Yeah you heard me. If you haven't tried these and you are at all a fan of peanut butter then do it. And check out the pictures on his blog cause I slightly over baked mine so they are a little dark on top but they were still amazing. I'll make them again and keep a closer eye on them.
Ok so the cinnamon rolls kind of ended up being lunch.
The cake requested was a "death by chocolate, really fudgy chocolaty." Ok, a chocoholic should be able to come up with something. This is what was produced:

Chocolate Truffle Cake
Cake Layers
1/4 cup chocolate chips (or 2 oz of your favorate chocolate bar)
1/4 cup canola oil 3/4 cup all purpose flour (wheat would be f ine here too)
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/8 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1 small ripe banana, mashed (apple sauce would probably work)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup plain soy milk (or other nondairy milk)
1 Tb flax meal
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350F and oil two 9" round cake pans. Set up your double boiler (or makeshift double boiler) and melt chocolate chips with oil. While chocolate is melting, sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl. In your liquid measuring cup, combine soy milk, flax and vanilla. Set aside. Whisk your melted chocolate and oil well to combine well. Add in mashed banana and sugar, mix well. Fold in soy/flax mixture. Stir the chocolate mixture into the dry ingredients. Split the batter evenly between the two pans. There should be enough to cover the bottom of both. Spread the batter to the edges of the pans and even out as much as you can. These will be fairly thin layers. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until inserted toothpick comes out clean. The edges should pull away from the sides of the pans. Cool the layers in the pans.

Creamy Center Layer
6 oz semisweet chocolate (or darker, I used 75% dark bars)
1 12oz pkg extra firm silken tofu
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Melt the chocolate in your double boiler. Pour off any extra liquid from the tofu and add to food processor. Process until smooth scraping down sides as needed. Add sugar & vanilla. Process until combined. Add melted chocolate. Process until smooth.

Ganache

6oz of semisweet or bittersweet choocolate (I used 75% Dark Bars for this too)

6 oz (3/4 cup) soy creamer (or nondairy milk of choice)

1 Tb light corn syrup

1 Tb dark rum (optional)

3/4 tsp vanilla

Chop chocolate and place in a medium sized bowl. Heat creamer and corn syrup in saucepan on low until it reaches a gentle boil. Immediately pour over chocolate. Allow to set for one minute then slowly stir and mix chocolate and cream together until melted and mixed. Blend in vanilla and rum. Glaze will thicken but should still be pourable.

Assembly: Place one cake layer on plate, add creamy center layer and spread to near the edges, place second cake layer on top, press gently to bring center layer even with edges of the cake (the center layer doesn't need to have smooth edges but you can smooth them if you want. Pour ganache on top, you can spread to edges and allow to drip over sides or you can smooth it evenly over top and sides. Add chocolate shavings to top to pretty up the presentation if you'd like.

We went out for dinner to Single Pebble but more on that in a later post.