My Favorite Recipes Collection: Dubai Dark Chocolate Cake Bomb with Dark Chocolate Ganache and Pistachio Cream frosting.

All the Dubai Chocolate and items sold in stores and on line are with milk chocolate and sometime with white chocolate, which are too sweet for me and as you may have noticed in my home made Dubai chocolate bars, I make it with dark chocolate. You don't have to spend tons of money on "Belgium" dark chcolate. I just get it from Aldi. The Choceur dark chocolate bar which is 49% cocoa and not very sweet yet not bitter. I use the same bars to make the Dubai chocolate bar. So this time to make the ganache I used this chocolate. By now means I am cake decorator but I tried this and it looked like a bomb and was very rich and yummy tasting but I was ashamed to share it with one of my friends who is a professional pastry chef, Ms. Norma S. who is amazingly talented in decorating and creating amazing cakes and cake towers and has agreed to make the Dubai chocolate cake for my retirement party which is organized by my husband and my adult sons. Bless her heart, and thank you Norma for doing this for me, I will be forever grateful to you.

So I started thinking how can I make Dubai chocolate cake with dark chocolate cake besides having the ganache made with dark chocolate and instant coffee. I did not want to spend too much time making the cake part of it from scratch, since I was making this for the first time, so I don't have to worry about cake coming out right. Hence I started looking in my pantry. The answer sat right in front of me.. I had a box of Devils food cake mix, which essentially dark and the chewy fudge brownie mix. So I mix both the mix and combined both recipes and took 6 eggs instead of 3 for each and doubled the amount of oil instead of 1 cup of oil, I used 1/2 cup of water, but as I was mixing the batter, I did not double to water amount, just put same amount of water as noted on one of the box cake mix to make it to cake batter consistency (not too watery). Still it took about 55 min to bake the cake in two 10" round pans. Another hint, I did not use mouse in between the cake layer to separate the pistachio cream and crunchy Kataife mix. I used ganache instead to keep the filling crunchy. When you get the Dubai chocolate cake in stores they use chocolate fluffy mouse, which in my opinion, makes the filling soggy.

So here are the items you will need to make this cake beside your regular baking needs:

Two 10" round cake pan spring form pans
One metal cookie sheet big enough to place both the pans on it.
Parchment paper cut in to round shape to line the bottom of pans and for prepping the Knaife
Vegetable oil cooking spray
Electric mixer.
Hand mixer
Cake turntable
Sharp knife
Sauce pan
Spatula to spread the ganache and filling
Scraper

Oven preheated at 350 F (I usually preheat and 400 F and turn the temp down to 350 F when I put the cake in it as, you loose some heat by opening the oven)

Here are the ingredients you will need to make the cake:

1 box of Devil food cake mix (any brand)
1 box of chewy fudge brownie mix (any brand) if can find dark chocolate brownie mix that would be perfect
6 eggs
1 cup of oil
1/2 cup of water (not doubling the about in both cake mix)
1 small box of pistachio instant pudding mix
2/3 cup of sour cream
1+ cup of crushed pistachios (1/2 to put in the cake batter and other half for decoration. (I always use Costco roasted salted pistachio as they are good quality and salt is always needed in the sweet dishes to bring out the taste) If you want to use unsalted raw pistachios that is fine too. I go for easily available ingredients.

Here are the ingredients you will need to make the filling:

1/2 pound of Kataife (half of the pack that it comes in)
4 table spoon of butter 1/2 the stick of butter melted
250 grams of pistachio butter, I made it from scratch for the chocolate bars but I wanted to make it easy so I bought readymade, you can get it Amazon or Walmart
2 generous table spoon of Tahini (available at local middle eastern store)
The detail method of how to prep the Kataife is on my post for Dubai dark chocolate bars.

Here are the ingredients you will need to make the ganache:

6 bars of Choceur dark chocolate bars
1 cup of mini dark chocolate morsels
1 pint of heavy whipping cream
2 table spoon of Oil from the tahini or you can just use melted butter
1 table spoon of dark cocoa powder
1 teaspoon of instant coffee mix (or half you don't like coffee) and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Method: First prepare the Kataife for filling:

* Preheat the oven at 400 F will then reduce the temp to 350 F

* Kataife packs are available in any middle eastern grocery store. There are several brands, I prefer Athens Shredded Phyllo dough.

* It comes in 16 oz box. I cut it into half and put the other one in freezer.

* One half of the box ( 8 ozs) makes 4 cups of shredded crispy Kataife.

* You will also need 4 tablespoon of melted unsalted butter.

* Basically you take the shredded dough apart with hands first and then cut it with scissors in small strands and separate them.

* Place the shredded dough that has been taken apart on a tray lined with parchment paper.

* Pour melted butter over it and mix with finger so all the strands are coated with butter.

* Separate all the strands that are stuck together.

* Put the tray with the dough in oven and bake it of 10 min.

* Take the tray out in 10 min then again mix them carefully with spatula flipping it over and separating all the strands that are stuck together,

* Put it back in oven and bake it for8 additional min,

* Make sure you stay near by and monitor, you just need them to be golden brown and not burnt.

* If you don't want to do this oven you can do this on stove top in a skillet.

* Heat the skillet on stove on medium heat, add butter coated chopped Kataifii strands.

* Cook the Kataifii for few min while continuously mixing until golden brown.

* Turn the heat off and set aside.

* For me both the time I made this chocolate the over method worked really well, but it is up to you.

* If you are not making the chocolate cake same day, let it cool and place it in a air tight container until you are ready to make the chocolate.

* Once you have prepped the Kataife, set aside and let it cool.

Once cool you can make the filling while the cake is baking and after you have made the ganache.

* Mix pistachio cream, prepped Kataife and tahini all together and set it aside.

Method to make the cake:

* Preheat the oven at 400 and then turn it down to 350 after placing the cake pans in oven
* Beat eggs in electric mixer.

* Add oil and mix

* Add water and mix in same mixer

* Add Devil's food cake mix and brownie mix, sour cream and pistachio pudding mix and mix well until everything thing is well incorporated.

* Add crushed pistachio and mix well until everything thing is well incorporated.

* Spray the bottom of two spring form pan with cooking oil add parchment paper then lightly spray again with cooking oil spray.

* Evenly pour the cake batter in pans and place the pans on cookie sheets and place it in preheated oven, be sure to turn the temp down to 350 F

* I baked it for 30 then checked with tooth pick and it did not come out clean so baked for addition 25 min and then it was perfect.

* Take the cake pans out of oven and let them cool completely (do not rush) while you make the ganache first and then the pistachio Kataife filling, see above, sorry the pics are not in order)

Method to make Ganache:

Mix follow in a glass bowl:
Chop chocolate bars
Mix with chocolate chips
Add cocoa powder
Add oil for tahini or melted butter
Heat heavy cream in a sauce pan until see the bubbles around the pan and barely begin to simmer (not boiling)
Pour the cream on top of chopped chocolate, cocoa powder, coffee mix and oil from tahini or butter to the heated cream.

Let it stand for 5 min undisturbed.
Then start stirring the mixture starting from middle of the bowl outward until all the chocolate has melted and is smooth.
If ganache is not of desired consistency and too liquidy, you can microwave 30 sec at a time and constantly watching and mixing it.
Add vanilla
If lumpy you can use hand mixer to smooth it out.
Let it stand to cool to room temp.
Mean while make the pistachio cream and Knaife filling.

Now you can assemble to cake

How to assemble the cake or cake bomb in my case:

You will need a sharp knife to slice the baked cake rounds:
Release the cake rounds from pan, slide the top off and slice them in to two or three slices, I did two as you can see I did four layers.
Place a parchment paper on bottom of tray on turntable table.
Spread little ganache on parchment paper.
Place for layer of round cut slice of cake.
Spread ganache on this slice followed by generous Pistachio and Knaife filling
Place another slice of cake
Repeat the process for three layers, then finally icing the entire cake with ganache and generously spreading pistachio cream and sprinkle with pistachio.
Cover with dome cake cover and place in the fridge for at least 4 hours.