Boston Cream Pie

I recently spent the weekend in Boston with my parents.  I'd never been there before and I made a list of things that we needed to eat while we were there:  lobster, New England clam chowder, and, of course, Boston Cream Pie.  Now, I think I've only had Boston Cream Pie once or twice before and it's not something I crave or dream of but I think that when you're in Boston, you must have Boston Cream Pie!  Well, we ordered it and it was . . . ok.  Only ok, kind of dry, not exciting. So, I decided that I needed to make a Boston Cream Pie to settle once and for all where I stand on this dessert.  And, come on, it's cake, pastry cream, and chocolate, there's no reason for a so-so cream pie!   

Here I am about to dig into the "so-so" BCP:

I looked and looked but it was much harder than I thought it would be to find a recipe for BCP. Upon reflection, I think that this is probably because it's really just three very individual components:  yellow sponge cake, vanilla pastry cream (or pudding), and chocolate ganache.  I found a recipe in The Joy of Cooking that looked really great but in the end I went with Gale Gand's recipe because, in my opinion, she is awesome!  I have never made one of her recipes and had it "flop" on me.  The only change that I made to the recipe was to use one, 9" cake pan rather than a pie plate because, well, because I didn't like the idea of using a pie plate, so there. Boston Cream Cake.  Other than that, it was splendidly good.  Dudley gave it two very enthusiastic thumbs up and I liked it as well.  The chocolate ganache was very dark, I used 60% cacao chocolate and next time I might change that.  Beware:  this recipe uses many, many egg yolks so you'll have lots of whites left over.