My brain must have melted, I am totally unable to think up a nice flavor combo for cake/bc. I am planning on making a surprise cake for a teacher who is expecting a baby soon. I know what the design is going to be, a diaper bag, but I can't decide on flavour. I have had to do too many chocolate cake with choc BC or yellow cake with pastry cream and BC recently that I have not been experimenting at all with other types of cake. So now my mind is blank. I need help!!

So here is your challenge - what would you serve to really make a pregnant lady's day?

Everybody's brains melted out there? Well, at least it makes me feel a bit better that I am not alone.

I just had a tip that she likes chocolate. I have made loads of chocolate cakes recently, most often filled with choc BC and some morello cherry jam. It is nice but I feel like changing that up a bit. Any ideas what to fill the choc cake with?

I'm not very good at the whole cake/filling combo thing but Nutella is delicious with chocolate. You can stir some into your regular buttercream.

Or maybe something with strawberries?

A lot of people do cookies and cream (crushed up Oreos).

You could stir some Heath bar pieces into your buttercream.

Oh boy, I'm getting hungry......

chocolate with a filling of:

whipped ganache
raspberry
strawberry
orange...something


But if she is a big chocolate lover, I would say overdose on chocolate here. Fudgey, ganachey, chocolate chippy, cookies and creamy....you get the picture.

strawberry?? nice with choc!!

what about a choc cake with white choc mousse filling.
im on brain freeze right now too!

There is a chocolate stout cake that I LOVE!! It doesn't really taste like beer. It is so rich and good. The recipe is on epicurious.com . You could made ganache and the cherry jelly, or raspberry. Good luck

Orange flavored cake. Torte with choc BC cover in ganache.

Mike

Cookies and Cream!!

That chocolate stout cake is WONDERFUL! My MIL likes it with orange chocolate ganache.

It depends on what you are going for.. vanilla butter cake with coconut pastry cream and pineapple filling is to DIE for if you like coconut. I add some coco lopez to my SMBC too and it's sooo good. I'd suggest soaking the cake with a rum simple syrup, but she's all preggers and that wouldn't work. Vanilla butter cake with whipped cream cheese filling with fresh berries folded in is also very good and refreshing. Chocolate cake with chocolate mousse is ALWAYS good.. and you can add some fresh raspberries in the layers for a nice tart punch. Chocolate with peanut butter mousse is good too topped with ganache it's like a high end peanut butter cup.. . Vanilla cake with lemon buttercream and raspberry puree is also very good. Chocolate or vanilla cake with caramel filling is yummy too. I'll come back if I can think of anything else..

Thank you people!! I knew you were not all kidnapped by aliens and had your brains sucked out.

Nutella, mmmmmmmmmm.... I looooove Nutella. Now would you mix it into whipped cream or into b/c?

Cookies and cream, again - would you use real whipped cream and crushed cookies? My only problem is that I am not sure how if there will be space in the fridge up at the school once it is there. I have almost no experience with using puddings and other non-"real" products. That is not to say I won't try, more I don't know how to confidently use other products.

Mike, do you have a good orange cake recipe? I have done what you suggested in the past but found the cake itself not "bright" enough against the chocolate. I used the WBH Orange butter cake.

When you use strawberries, do you use real berries or do you use jam? My only worry would be the berries making the cake soggy.

White chocolate mousse, do you have a recipe audrea?

I will look up the chocolate stout cake, sounds interesting. I love stout with beef so why not chocolate.

jkalman, you sneaked in while I was typing in the reply. Thanks for your delicious sounding suggestions. I really like the sound of the vanilla with whipped cream cheese and berry filling, I will make that for myself I think!

How do you make peanut butter mousse?

All of you should see me now, the drool is hanging out of my mouth. Very fetching!

My favorite (and easy) chocolate cake filling is mint buttercream or mint-chocolate ganache... just add a bit of mint extract to your buttercream or ganache! Yum!

Nothing would be simpler than to mix some strawberry jam with some chocolate buttercream for your filling. And it tastes great too!

And, if you happen to want a pink cake, white buttercream with some strawberry jam is wonderful and so pretty too.

This may be a stupid question, but does Chocolate Stout Cake contain beer? Alcohol doesn't bake out right? This is for a pregnant lady so maybe it's not a good recipe to use?

The chocolate stout cake is awesome. There is one pint of stout in it. I have read in other posts that alcohol evaporates during the baking process. Just the taste of the stout is left.

When people ask about painting with lustre dust (etc.), common advice is to mix the dust with something that has a high alcohol content, such as vanilla flavouring. So I guess if a small amount of alcohol were an issue, we'd have to be worried about other stuff we use that has it in there.

I use these types of flavourings in my BC, which is never cooked, so it wouldn't evaporate. I've never been concerned about it.

foxymomma521, alcohol evaporates well below boiling point so would be ok for a pregnant lady.

Love the mint chocolate bc idea. I love mint chocolates so feel a bit stupid for not thinking about it myself.

I love all these ideas. I am going to print them all out and keep for another one of those blank moments. Believe you me, there are a few of those!

julzs71, I had a look on epicurious and there are more than one chocolate stout recipe. Do you mind looking at these two links and telling me which is the one you have used?

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/CHOCOLATE-STOUT-CAKE-107105

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/CHOCOLATE-STOUT-CAKE-231665

Not all of the alcohol evaporates. I had to bake for someone with an alcohol allergy once, and they made me well aware of that.

There was a thread here a while back, maybe the crash ate it, but it had links to articles about alcohol in baking.

Surprisingly, sometimes a lot of alcohol content remains. Maybe someone else has the info handy? But apparently it is not true that all of the alcohol evaporates and sometimes it is true that quite a bit remains.

If you are using a small amount to paint on the surface of a cake, the total amount of alcohol originally used would be exceedingly small. But if you were to put a large quantity in a cake and someone was not medically allowed to consume alcohol, I think it would be important to know how much alcohol remains.

I'm not a drinker, and now due to medical issues, I cannot be a drinker, but I love many dishes cooked in wine. I use so little that by the time it is divided among the dish and at least some of the alcohol has evaporated, I don't worry. But I would need to know if there was a chance that there was anything substantial remaining.

Anyone have links to those articles?

I stand corrected. I assumed the oven temperature would cook it out. But in the grand scheme of things (not talking about people with allergies here now) the overall amount of alcohol in the cake would be very small. One recipe I looked at had only 1/2 cup of stout in it. Beer generally is not high in alcohol so I cannot imagine that a slice of cake even with all the alcohol still intact would pose a problem to someone pregnant.

Not all of the alcohol evaporates. I had to bake for someone with an alcohol allergy once, and they made me well aware of that.
ETA: sorry, I posted this without reading the rest of the posts

. . . here are some great ideas for "top shelf" cakes . . . http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopic-22947-0-days0-orderasc-.html

edited to add:

p.s. I think this is the link you are requesting above with regards to alcohol . . . http://www.ochef.com/165.htm

BakingGirl - I use the first recipe you have there, the one with the two cups of Guiness.

If you find that your citrus fillings aren't bright enough.. add some citric acid. You can find it at most cake and candy stores. It's a natural sour additive made from lemons and it is used to give super sour candies their pucker. It just adds that bright note you need.

PB mousse is really easy..

9 oz of creamy peanut butter
8 oz cream cheese
1 c powdered sugar
1 TBSP vanilla extract
1 cup of heavy cream

Using electric mixer, beat peanut butter and cream cheese in large bowl to blend. Add powdered sugar and vanilla extract and beat until well blended. Using clean dry beaters, beat whipping cream in medium bowl until stiff peaks form; fold into peanut butter mixture in 4 additions.

It's the Stout Cake without the prunes..

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/CHOCOLATE-STOUT-CAKE-107105

I made rootbeer cupcakes this weekend. I just substituted the water for the rootbeer.

Then I made a rootbeer glaze of powdered sugar and rootbeer. Yummy! I added a dollop of buttercream on top to make it seem like a float.

Thank you all again for all the fantastic tips and ideas. What would I do without you all?

Citric acid, huh! I would never have thought of that in a million years, that is very clever. I'll order some next time I do a cake supply order, it will be a good addition to my box of tricks.

Thanks for the PB mousse recipe, it looks seriously good! I just happen to have some cream cheese that needs to be used so may have to give it a whirl.

I just used up some leftover PB mousse in a chocolate cake and covered it with some ganache.. sooooo good.