Chocolate cake squares with pastry cream frosting

This is one of the best cakes I have ever ate. It’s moist, tasty and fluffy and it’s covered with a silky pastry cream. My youngest daughter calls it „frosted brownie”. I took the recipe from my mom’s recipes notebook, it’s a dessert that I’ve known since childhood and I’ve always loved it.

Ingredients:

► For pastry cream

• 5 egg yolks
• 750 ml whole milk
• 40 g cornstarch
• 150 g granulated sugar
• 1 vanilla bean
• 100 g butter, cubed

► For the cake

• 300 g cake flour
• 80 g black cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 250 g butter
• 2 eggs
• 5 egg whites (from the eggs used for the custard)
• 250 ml whole milk
• 400 g granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon of orange zest

► For finishing:

• 100 g dark chocolate

Directions

First prepare the custard, because it needs time to cool and set. Put the milk and the vanilla seeds (scraped from the vanilla bean) into a saucepan and bring to a boil. In another saucepan, mix egg yolks with sugar and cornstarch. Pour slowly the warm milk into the egg mixture, whisking vigorously; then place the saucepan over a medium-low heat, whisking continuously, until it thickens (it takes a few minutes). Turn off the heat, force the cream through a sieve, add butter and mix until butter is melted and the cream is homogenized. Cover with plastic wrap and let cool completely.

For the cake, prepare a rectangular cake pan, grease it and flour it. I used a 26/35/6 cm sheet cake pan.

Preheat the oven at 175 Celsius. Sift together flour, cocoa and baking powder. Separate egg whites from the two eggs and put them together with the other 5 egg whites and a pinch of salt into a mixing bowl and whip them until stiff peaks form.

In another bowl, mix butter with sugar until creamy, add gradually the two egg yolks, orange zest, milk and flour. Finally fold in gently the whipped egg whites. Pour the batter into the baking pan, level it and place the pan into the oven. Bake until the cake is done, for about 30 minutes (test the cake with a bamboo toothpick). Take off the pan from the oven and let the cake cool completely. Spread evenly the pastry cream all over the cake and grate chocolate on top. Cut in squares and serve. Store the remaining cake into the fridge.