Two cocoa cakes, in preparation for Pierre Hermé's Faubourg Pavé. Cake flour and potato starch and egg whites (and cocoa powder and butter and egg yolks). Happy birthday, Alex!

Faubourg Pavé. Cocoa cake soaked in a caramel syrup and layered and covered with caramel ganache that's been dotted with poached apricots. Kind of like a sachertorte, but with caramel, lots more cream, much moister cake, and lemony, peppery apricot dice instead of jam.

Faubourg Pavé again.

The horribly uneven layers of my Faubourg Pavé (but the apricot dice make them look worse than they are). Ultimately, I was pretty pleased with the result. The caramel ganache is nice—even with some milk chocolate, it's not horribly sweet—and the cake was a nice complement to everything else.