Neapolitan Cake

It's been a week since the kids are home for holiday, and it's been a week I've been asking them almost 3 times a day what do they want to eat. And boy..they do eat a lot during holiday.

Sometimes I'm lucky if we have some leftover from the night before. And sometimes I'm not. And kid you not, my kids are difficult and they are picky eater. If one person agree to eat particular dishes/meal, the other one will said no and I will def tell them to go and fix your own meal. I'm not your personal chef. And normally they will oblige to eat, or rather force to eat.

But one thing they could agree would be the tea time or dessert. When I announced earlier that I'm making a Neapolitan, they were so happy. Actually I never make this cake before, and normally I would just buy  it from the shop when we were in France. Thinking of too much work and cleaning up...not my cup of tea of course.

Idea came up when I saw that I have a tub of leftover ganache from the football cake last week. And I was wondering what can I do with it. Suddenly I remember a friend of mine, Marion, told me that her daughter love neapolitan cake so much. So thank you to Marion..I will definitely think of Anne Sophie when I eat this later.

Neapolitan Cake

 For this recipe I used a basic sponge cake from Perfect Sponge Cake. 

Sponge Cake

Ingredients:

 5 eggs

3/4 cup of sugar

1 cup all purpose flour

 *For the chocolate batter, I add 3 tbsp cocoa powder into the batter.

Royal Icing:

1 cup icing sugar (maybe more)

1 egg white

Chopped chocolate or chocolate rice for sprinkle

Beat egg white until foamy, and slowly add the icing sugar. Mix well until the mixture thickened.

  For the cake:

Preheat oven at 350 deg F or 180 deg C.

In a stand mixer, add all the 5 eggs and sugar. Whisk until it triple the volume.

Using a spatula, fold in 2 to 3 times the flour, slowly and don't over mix the batter.

Pour in a greased baking pan (i used 20 cm square pan) and bake for 30 minutes.

Let the cakes cool down.

Now you will have 2 plain and 1 chocolate sponge cake. 

*For this recipe, I double the ingredients and divided to 3 portions. 

  Ganache Recipe:

200 g dark chocolate

100 g heavy cream

Coarsely chop chocolate. Bring cream to boil and pour over chocolate, let it sit in for 10 minutes. 

Stir the cream and the chocolate until smooth and shiny. 

The ganache is ready to use. 

* If you have some ganache leftover, pop it in the fridge to hardened it a bit. Once it's a bit hardened, remove from the fridge, and turn it into a truffle. Roll the truffle in cocoa powder, or chopped nuts, desiccated coconuts or whatever fancy your taste.

To assemble:

Place the first plain cake on a serving plate. Spread ganache evenly. Top the second cake, this time with chocolate cake, spread evenly and place the last plain cake on top. Press the layers slowly. 

Trimmed the side of the cake. 

Spread the royal icing evenly, and sprinkle with chopped chocolate or chocolate rice.

Let the cake stand in room temperature at least for 30 minutes before serving.