Trying To Create The Lana Chocolate Cake

First and foremost, my apologies for the uninspiring photos. We had a flash flood inducing downpour this afternoon complete with menacingly dark sky and heart stopping thunderous sound effects...Dismal lighting conditions kill all traces of enthusiasm.



Those who have grown up in Singapore would probably know about the famous Lana Chocolate Fudge cake. For the longest time, the Lana Chocolate Cake has been considered THE ULTIMATE chocolate cake in Singapore. This was before more modern and popular chocolate cake outlets like Awfully Chocolate started their business. Both establishments sell their signature chocolate cakes only in the big formats. You can't get just a slice - you will have to buy the whole 6" or 8" cake. These are simple no frill chocolate cakes drenched in dark chocolate fudge. I was attending Joycelyn's Ultimate Chocolate Fudge Cake class last weekend when I was reminded of  the old time favourite Lana Cake. ( For those who are curious about the Lana Cake, please see this write up by Indulgence after Workout)

The hands on class provided us with a recipe pack with different fudge frosting options for the cake. However, as we had to frost our cake almost immediately after baking it, we were not able to work with a butter cream or chocolate ganache frosting. (the cake would have been too warm and the frosting would have runneth over) The hands on exercise had us working with a Chocolate icing sugar cream frosting. I chose to skip that as I knew it would have been too sweet for my palate. Instead, I lugged back the plain chocolate cake and decided that I would try to prepare my own frosting at home.



It was then, that I started wondering about Lana's mysterious chocolate frosting. A little springy with a jello like texture, this had become its signature. After a quick search on line, I found an interesting lead for the recipe here. Thickened with corn flour and solidified with gelatine, the formula looks promising. The recipe had called for some strange chocolate coating. I simply replaced that with melted dark chocolate.



I made the mistake of not cooling the fudge enough before frosting and hence had a difficult time applying it over the cake. Joycelyn's chocolate cake was definitely more moist and fluffy compared to Lana's. The frosting was delicious but I am still not too sure if it has quite the same jello-like texture. 



I will probably continue to search for a gelatine based fudge and experiment again with different flavours such as banana or raspberry jelly....



I shall not publish Joycelyn's recipes but if you are interested, I would suggest that you use this recipe as a starting point.







For recipe please refer to this site.