Charlotte Cake for Epiphany 2026

Vanilla sponge and chocolate "Charlotte".


On this day of Epiphany 2026, we're not having our usual festive dinner.  We're all still tired from the holidays, my elbow is injured, R* has to work late, on and on.  We're just having salmon patties and a salad, so it's extra important to have a nice dessert.

And yet, I haven't been to the store and am trying to avoid shopping, so I needed to make do with what I have at hand. Pantry ingredients, 3 squares of bakers chocolate, and 1/2 cup of whipping cream.  I thought of my Nordic Ware Charlotte Cake pan! It's easy to make a sponge cake and it looks beautiful right out of the pan. I didn't have any fruit for the topping but a bit of chocolate ganache and some whipped cream will put it over the top!

I found this recipe on the Nordic Ware website. Here are the directions:



From reading the reviews, it was evident the recipe makes too much batter and the pan overflows.  I modified the recipe as follows:

3 eggs instead of 4

100g of sugar instead of 133g

60g of flour instead of 80g

1/4 heaping teaspoon of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

I made a mistake while ribboning the eggs and instead of beating them for 1 minute until foamy and then adding the sugar, I beat them for 6-7 minutes before I realized I'd forgotten the sugar. By now the eggs had risen big time! I "ignored this" (aka hoped for the best!) and gradually added the sugar and beat for another 8 minutes looking for that ribbon stage where they fall off the beater and sit there for a few seconds before incorporating into the batter.  It almost happened, and after 8 minutes I lost my nerve and decided to go with the batter as it was.  I didn't want too much air and have the cake collapse.

The cake rose in the oven to just the top edge of the pan. Good thing I cut back on the ingredients!  It released easily and cooled on the rack looking beautiful.

Beautiful definition on the cake,
 cooling on the rack!

I made a chocolate ganache and spread it on the caketop and let it cool. 

Smooth chocolate ganache.

 Using a 1/2 inch tip, I piped dots of whipped cream on top. The cream was whipped a bit too long and was on the verge of being "broken", so the resulting dots weren't as smooth as I pictured them. Some of them definitely looked like ghosts LOL.

Messy whipped cream "ghosts".

The cake was delicious,  the sponge was light and tasty and the only improvement is that it could have used a thicker layer of chocolate but hey, I used what I had on hand.  Lately it's become fashionable to say in praise of desserts that "they're not too sweet". I find this to be a ridiculous and snobby statement. It's dessert! It's supposed to be sweet!  And yet, those who are fond of that phrase would have enjoyed this dessert too. It wasn't too sweet! Insert laugh emoji. And a wink one, too.

Side view of "Charlotte" cake.



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