Death By Chocolate ver 2

Death By Chocolate ver 2 with fresh mint leaves.

Everybody LIKES chocolate – somehow. No, don't shake your head in disagreement. As a hilaw na manga and bagoong-person (my soul tingles at the sight of green mango and sauteed salted shrimp fry), I would probably do the same if I hear that statement from someone else. But you have to admit, we all have chocolate fixes. Mine is a candy-coated dark chocolate with peanuts. Yes, Patrick, I agree that it is indeed a rip-off since the candy coating is relatively thick, there's too little chocolate in it and the peanut inside is more or less 400% bigger than an average-sized peanut in a Prinsesa pack. If you grew up in the Philippines, circa 80s to 90s, you probably know what Prinsesa is.

When Ryan asked for a chocolatier cake for his birthday, I knew I had to come up with something that will make his pores bleed chocolate and his eyes pop in overload.

I landed on Cacaoweb's Death By Chocolate which I consider version 1. It is a fairly simply recipe but it requires an oven. If you intend to make this, you do not need to buy an oven (yet, although it is a good investment); if you have friends who own one, visit them, bake and increase your pogi/ganda points.

HOW TO MAKE IT:

The cake:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit (Gas mark 4/180 degrees Celsius) for 30 minutes or until the temperature gauge lights up. Preheating stabilizes temperature inside the oven, ensuring that your dish will be cooked evenly. See? It's not at all useless waste of gas, considering the alternative of throwing your food if it is not cooked well/overcooked.

The original recipe uses a round 10-inch (25cm) cake tin, 3 inches tall. I used a 8x8x2 inch (square with 2-inch height) bake pan. Use a baking sheet and grease it.

Melt the chocolate with butter over hot water, mix until smooth. Set aside and let it cool down a little.

In a separate mixing bowl, beat the eggs with sugar. Add the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and vanilla extract. You might want to cut down on sugar depending on your taste. I tried this recipe a week after using just half a cup of refined/white granulated sugar and it fits my taste perfectly. This just came to mind that replacing it with brown sugar, which has a richer mollases taste, might work.

Add the lemon squeeze to your cream, then add it to your chocolate-butter mix. Slowly fold it in (i.e. gently combine two mixtures of different densities, i.e. light and heavy, maintaining air within) with the egg mixture.

Bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted on the cake comes out clean.

Let it cool completely, place inside the refrigerator for 30 minutes. (Remember to cover it when you place it inside, cake easily absorbs your fridge odor.)

Remove from pan to apply frosting and place topping.

The frosting/topping:

Heat the whipping cream in a sauce pan and pour over the semi-sweet chocolate. Stir until smooth and let it cool, otherwise it will slip from your cake onto the platter.

When the cake has cooled down, put the frosting. Spread around the chocolate chip on the frosted cake. (See the original recipe from Cocoaweb for alternatives.)

We added young mint leaves on top of it. If you have berries, add sliced or whole strawberries, don't take the fruit's green cap off, green looks good on brown – on cakes at least, or a few blueberries or any fruit on top just to add color to the deep brown Death by Chocolate Ver 2.

I think the whole cake came out with more than 12 servings. But the whole cake didn't last for twenty-four hours, we had to lick the platter at the end of the cook fest. Ryan took the last slice. I think the birthday boy deserved it anyway. Although we promised not to gang-up on him for a whole twenty-four hour, we slipped a few times during dinner and he had to run off to work after eating and came back after for a little drinking.

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* Personally, I would like to thank Hal, Editor of, and of course, Cacaoweb for allowing me to publish a mirrored version of their Death By Chocolate.