Ina Garten's Oscar Party Dessert Is One Of Her Most Iconic Recipes

If anyone has a plus one to Ina Garten's Oscar party this year, please let us know. Some of the best moments on her show "Barefoot Contessa" were parties she threw, so you know the bar is high. For those of us who didn't get an invite and probably don't have any connections who can get us in, Garten took to Instagram to share one of her iconic desserts she plans on serving at her Oscar party: chocolate ganache cake.

This cake first appeared in a 2017 chocolate-focused episode of her Food Network show "Cook Like a Pro." In the episode, she introduces the dessert as her go-to chocolate cake. Garten calls it "completely foolproof" and notes it can be made at any size. The chocolate ganache she uses dates back even further to a 2011 episode of "Barefoot Contessa." The episode focused on cookies. She introduced the recipe in an "Ask Ina" segment about chocolate dip for her heart-shaped cookies. That Garten is still using the ganache after more than a decade shows its lasting power.

The recipe is simple: butter and sugar creamed in a mixer. Then, while the mixer is set to slow, she adds eggs (one at a time), chocolate syrup (a 16-ounce can of Hershey's), vanilla (a tablespoon), and flour (added slowly to prevent lumps). Since Hershey's discontinued cans of syrup, she now recommends 1 1/3 cups of the brand's syrup from the bottle. If you ask us, there are better chocolate syrups out there, so we say use whatever syrup you like. She advises making the cake ahead of time and keeping it in the fridge.

For the ganache, she melts chocolate and cream together in a double boiler. To this, she adds her secret weapon — instant coffee granules, whose bitterness cuts the sweetness and deepens the chocolate flavor. Making the cake ahead of time and then frosting it the day of makes spreading the ganache easier since the cake is cool.

Garten's new addition to the recipe for her Oscar party is a layer of crème anglaise on the plate that the cake rests on. Garten uses her classic trick of melting vanilla ice cream, which is a simplified version of the sauce. We're sure the invite to her party is in the mail for us, but just in case, we're glad we know how to make this for ourselves!