Chocolate Cake

Sieve the flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder, baking soda in a bowl. Add the sugar and mix well. Now add rest of the ingredients into the bowl, mix together to form a smooth batter. Do not over mix.

Pour this mixture into a greased and lined baking tin, bake this for 35-40 minutes, in a preheated oven at 180 degree Celsius. (I made the cake in double quantity to make 2 cakes for the layers).

Let the cake cool completely and de-mould, keep aside.

To make the ganache, chop the chocolate and put it in a bowl. Heat the cream in a sauce pan, remove from heat as soon as bubbles arise from the sides. Pour this into the bowl having chocolate. Add butter to it. Let this sit for 2-3 minutes.

Then mix the mixture well so that there are no chocolate lumps and it is smooth enough. Let this sit at room temperature for 2-3 hours or till the ganache is hard enough to frost the cake.

To make the butter frosting, whisk the butter and add the icing sugar. Whisk and add the vanilla extract.

Whisk until everything is fluffy, add the cream and whisk for few seconds more. Once the ganache is hard enough, pipe the butter cream and ganache frosting on on cake and top it with the other cake. (Create any design of your choice).

To make the caramel for praline, heat the sugar and water in a sauce pan. Do not mix the mixture with a ladle while the mixture is cooking.

Once the desired color of the caramel is ontained, switch off the flame, and keep sauce pan in ice filled bigger vessel (this is done to stop the sugar from cooking & burning further).

Hold the stick upside down until the sugar has hardened enough. Use the candied almond as desired.

To make the sugar spun, place 2 ladles on a vessel with some distance apart and take little caramel mixture and drop it like a web between the ladles.

Collect the web formed and decorate the spun as desired.