Chocolate Heaven Cake (piled high with summer berries)

Ooooh! What a delight this cake is!

Sometimes I'll make a cake and it does exactly what I expect. It's comforting or tasty or pretty etc... and serves it's purpose. Then occasionally, I'll play around with a recipe and something really special comes out of it. I can always tell when this happens because it gets consumed very quickly, without thought of greediness or calories or even fullness, because people seem to like it so much!!

This is one of those happy accidents.

A flourless chocolate cake, inspired by the delightful recipe of Sophie Dahl, who I believe was inspired in turn by the Chocolate Nemesis cake at The River Cake (yet to go there to eat but desperate to!!). I've made some feedahappylife alterations with a strawberry cream rather than creme fraiche, slightly less chocolate and the removal of the coffee from the ingredients.

Please, please, please make this at some point!! You wont be disappointed!

Chocolate Heaven Cake (piled high with summer berries)

Ingredients

• 200g best dark chocolate
• 250ml double cream
• 400g frozen berries (defrosted)
• 200g fresh strawberries
• 140g caster sugar
• 4 eggs (separated)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp strawberry conserve

Step 1: Preheat oven to 180c/ GM 4 and butter and line a cake tin (medium size - suggest 20cm - also suggest springform due to delicateness of cooked cake)

Step 2: Use a food processor to create a powder out of the chocolate and caster sugar. Add 120ml of boiling water and stir through. Then add the egg yolks and vanilla extract and stir to combine.

Step 3: Whisk the egg whites and then fold into the chocolate mixture.

Step 4: Pour into the cake tin and back for 50 minutes (test with a skewer). The top will be cracked.

Step 5: Allow the cake to cool for about 45 minutes and then fridge

Step 6: Before you need to serve, whip your cream until thick and stir through your strawberry conserve. Spoon the cream over the chocolate cake.

Step 7: Drain the frozen berries and mix with the fresh strawberries. Tumble over the cream and pile up in the centre

Step 8: Serve and slice your cake to hungry friends!

Enjoy!
Helen

Read more...

Chocolate Brownie.....the dark, rich and easy one....

I have recently embarked upon an indulgent mission to find the perfect chocolate brownie recipe. I started with the previously posted, double layer chocolate brownies. Yummy, but not quite perfect.

I have now decided to start from basic and build-up to perfection! Hence this easy recipe which produces great brownies, quickly! Importantly for me, they have good dose of nuts to add texture and produce the cracked top that all the best brownies should wear.

The flavour is greatly enhanced by the quality of your cocoa powder, so use the best you have. I prefer to use Green and Blacks cocoa powder, which you can get from most supermarkets. Incidentally, they have some lovely recipes on their website if you're a chocolate lover, including:

• White and Dark Chocolate Mousse Cake
• French Truffles
• Rich Chocolate Pots

I'm yet to try, but when I do, you'll know!


Easy Chocolate Brownies (makes about 20)

Ingredients

• 350g butter
• 140g cocoa powder
• 6 eggs
• 675g caster sugar
• 250g plain flour
• 3tsp vanilla essence
• 100g chopped walnuts

Step 1: Preheat oven to 180c/GM 4

Step 2: Line a deep baking tray (about 20cm x 30cm) with greaseproof paper

Step 3: Melt the butter and cocoa in a saucepan

Step 4: Whisk the eggs and then whisk in the sugar, flour and vanilla

Step 5: Add the cocoa mixture and nuts to the eggs. Fold through to combine.

Step 6: Pour into your tin and bake for 45 minutes or until springy to the touch (don't overcook or you'll loose the dense but soft centre)

Step 7: Cut into squares while warm (leave to cool for about 15 minutes first) and serve


Top Tips

• These last several days in the fridge if sealed in an airtight container

Read more...

Double Layer Chocolate Brownies.....with Raspberry Sauce

I have discovered a great new cook book!

It's called 'Puddings' and is by Women's Weekly. I picked it up a few weeks ago and can't stop making things from it! So much is appealing. I wondered how many calories I would consume if I cooked my way through it a la 'Julie and Julia'. This was a scary concept, so I've just picked the best.

I'm on a mission to perfect the brownie and I'm happy to admit that I'm not there yet! I want something squidgy in the middle, dense and rich on the tongue and a gently cracked top.

This one is from the aforementioned cookbook and is made up of a layer of dark chocolate brownie, topped-off with a layer of white chocolate brownie.

It's exceedingly naughty but rather nice (note the amount of chocolate!!). It's still not perfect, but give me time.......

You should get 16 naughty squares from this amount of mixture. I think it's best served warm with raspberry sauce rolling down the sides.

Double Layer Chocolate Brownies and Raspberry Sauce

Ingredients

• 
  
  125g butter
• 
  
  200g brown sugar
• 
  
  1tsp vanilla extract
• 
  
  4 eggs
• 
  
  75g plain flour
• 
  
  75g self raising flour
• 
  
  100g chopped nuts
• 
  
  200g dark chocolate
• 
  
  200g white chocolate
• 
  
  200g raspberry jam
• 
  
  50ml water
• 
  
  2 tsps cornflour
• 
  
  1tbsp water

Step 1: Preheat oven to 150c and grease and line a medium sized square cake tin

Step 2: Cream butter, vanilla and sugar

Step 3: Beat eggs, one-by-one, into butter

Step 4: Add flour and nuts and stir

Step 5: Melt the chocolate in separate bowls (I microwaved for about 2 minutes each)

Step 6: Divide mixture between 2 bowls and add melted white chocolate to one and melted dark chocolate to the other. Stir to combine

Step 7: Spread dark chocolate mix into the base of the cake pan and then top with the white chocolate mix

Step 8: Place brownie in oven for 1 hour until golden (mine took about 1 hour 15 - use your judgement a little)

Step 9: Whilst brownie is cooking, make your sauce. Add the jam and 50mls water to a saucepan and gently boil. Mix the cornflour with the tbsp of water to max a paste and add to the hot jam. Simmer until sauce thickens and then pour into a small dish to cool slightly

Step 10: Remove brownie from the oven, allow to cool for 10 minutes before cutting into squares and serving with your raspberry sauce.

Enjoy!

Helen x

Read more...

Use your loaf (a selection of sweet & savoury loaf cakes!)

I've been having a little bit of a loaf cake obsession lately.

A good chunk of cake is such a welcoming sight for me. Loaf cakes are pretty fail safe too - rarely suffering from the sinking middle of a more sensitive sponge - and really flexible on the ingredient front. Simply take a base recipe, throw in your favourite ingredients and off you go! If your additions sink a little too much to the bottom of the cake, it merely adds to the forgivable, rustic charm. The additions I'm sharing with you here are:

• Savoury pesto, pine nut and goats cheese
• Chocolate, vanilla and pear
• Date and walnut

Clearly, loaf cakes are more appropriate to serve at a lunchtime or informal gathering (perfect picnic cake) and will never engender the "oohs" and "ahhs" of a more sophisticated, efforty creation. But, when you want the house to smell of baking heaven and a slice of comforting sweetness on a plate in 60 minutes, loaf cake is the way to go.

It's also a good back-up freezer cake too. Bake it, let it cool, slice and freeze and you'll always have standby cake for when you really don't have the time to be the model of domesticity!

I'm moving house soon and have frozen some lemon loaf cake, so the first thing my partner and I can eat, amidst boxes, mess and delirium is a wedge of soft sponge and a mug of warming tea....perfect!

Loaf Cake Base Recipe

• 2tsps baking powder
• 150g plain flour
• 100g soft butter
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 150g caster sugar

Savory Pesto, Pine Nut & Goats Cheese

For this recipe, reduce the sugar to 50g and add the follow ingredients:

• 2 tbsp pesto (green)
• 100g goats cheese (a smooth, crumbly one works best)
• 100g pine nuts
• seasoning

Step 1: Preheat oven to 160c

Step 2: Mix all base ingredients together

Step 2: Crumble in goats cheese and seasoning. Stir through pesto gently to create swirls

Step 3: Pour into a medium sized, greased loaf tin and pour over the pine nuts to cover the top

Step 4: Bake in the oven for 50 - 60 minutes (place a knife or skewer through the centre, if it comes out with mix sticking to it, leave for another 10 minutes. Repeat until knife/skewer comes out clean)

Step 5: Leave to cool for 30 minutes and then tip out, slice and serve!


Chocolate, Pear & Vanilla

For this recipe, add the following to the base ingredients:

• 200g canned pears, drained and chopped (I had a rather posh jar someone had bought for me, but canned pears are just as good!)
• 2 tbsp best cocoa powder
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 20g plain flour

Step 1: Preheat oven to 160c

Step 2: Add the extra flour, cocoa powder and vanilla essence to you base mix and stir until all are combined and a smooth batter forms

Step 3: Stir through your pears

Step 4: Pour into a greased, medium sized loaf tin and bake for 50-60 minutes (follow above instructions regarding how to check when it's properly cooked)

Step 5: Leave to cool for 30 minutes, slice and serve!

Date & Walnut

Add the following to your base recipe:

• 150g chopped walnuts
• 150g chopped dates

Step 1: Preheat oven to 160c

Step 2: Mix together base ingredients and stir through nuts and walnuts

Step 3: Pour into greased, medium sized loaf tin

Step 4: Bake in oven for 50-60 minutes (follow above instructions to check when fully cooked)

Step 5: Remove from oven, cool, slice and serve!

Hope you enjoy!
Helen x

Read more...

Chocolate Pavlova Supernova...

Pavlova is a bit of a retro dessert that wont go away. Whilst banana splits and peach melba have been set-aside for future reinvention, unworthy of the dinner table in their age old form, the pavlova has always managed to keep itself en courant.  With toppings, meringue flavours and scented creams to vary, you can take the basic components and create something different and wonderous each time. I was thinking that pavlova is the Madonna of the dessert world....old but attractive, constantly reinvented and a bit of an attention seeker...anyway, I digress...

Created in the 1920s and named after the famed ballet dancer Anna Pavlova, it's billowing white case, topped with thick cream and tart berries is a welcome sight to behold. Also, if you are sparing with the cream (but where's the fun in that?!), it's quite a low fat dessert option. Justification, if you ever required it, to indulge.

This recipe started with the name. Driving along, I thought of Pavlova Supernova and decided I needed to create a Pavlova worthy of such a title. I needed to veer away from the traditional and develop something special. As I would be taking my creation to a chocolate-lovers household, I knew I needed to start there.

Challenge 1 solved - Chocolate meringue base

Then I needed to think through the cream. Options, options...hazelnut cream for a nutty, toblerone inspired cake? Maybe coffee cream with amaretto stirred through for a tiramisu-flavoured pavlova....No, this needed to be sweeter and naughtier. This was not about sophistication but pure, indulgent, calorific pleasure..

Challenge 2 solved - Caramel cream filling

Finally, the topping. No healthy berries for me, something else was required here. Shards of caramel scattered over the top? Maybe crushed peanut brittle spiced with cumin? Crushed, chocolate cookies heaped over the cream., hmmmm, not quite right, and then......

Challenge 3 solved - Crushed Crunchie and Maltesers topping

So, there it was. The three components of my Pavlova Supernova, ready to be created and shared! This recipe is definitely worthy of it's grand title and I think it's suitable evolution of the Pavlova. It's really not hard to make, but it is hard to stop eating (forget calorie counting with this one!). An explosion of chocolate, crispy, creamy naughtiness, coming your way...

Pavlova Supernova

Chocolate Meringue

• 4 egg whites
• 200g caster sugar
• 20g cocoa powder, sieved
• 2 tsp cider/white wine vinegar
• 1 tsp cornflour

Cream

•  1 tin of carnation caramel
• 400ml of double cream

Topping

• 1 bag of Maltesers
• 1 bar of Crunchie

Step 1: Preheat oven to 140°C. Line baking sheet with baking paper. Whisk egg whites until stiff but not dry. Mix sugar and cocoa powder and then whisk, a tablespoon at a time, into the egg whites. Keep whisking until it’s thick and glossy and then fold in the vinegar and cornflour.

Step 2: Spoon mixture onto the baking sheet and spread with the back of a spoon to form a large circle. Bake for about 2 hours or until the meringue is firm and crisp. Cool in the oven for about 2 hours, or until cold (e.g. leave overnight)

Step 3: Whisk the double cream until stiff. Add, a tablespoon at a time, 2/3 of the caramel, whisking after each addition. Spoon the caramel over the meringue, leaving an edge of about 2cm. Take a fork and apply, some of the remaining caramel to the top of the cream to create swirls in the top (think raspberry ripple).

Step 4: Crush the topping ingredients (I use a small food bag and a rolling pin) and scatter generously over the top.

Step 5: Cut into slices and devour!

Top Tips

• Plan to make the meringue the night before (less hassle and you can leave it in the warm oven overnight after cooking time has finished)
• Apply the topping as late as possible (moistness will affect the crispiness of the Maltesers) 
• Have tins of Carnation Caramel on standby - very, very useful for quick desserts (e.g. spread over pastry and top with apples and bake to make a quick tart. spread over a biscuit base, cover with sliced bananas, top with cream and grated chocolate to make a quick banoffee pudding etc....)

Helen x

Read more...

Vegetarian Yummyness...

Had a super-fun night last night cooking for and catching-up with friends, one of whom is vegetarian.

I'm always really conscious that people who are vegetarian or have food dislikes/intolerances aren't left out in the food department while everyone else scoffs away at the 'normal' food! I'm also pretty lazy and would rather cook one meal than lots of variations to accommodate everyone. So, my mission last night was cook a meal everyone would enjoy, vegetarians and non-vegetarians, that took minimal faffing on the night after a hard working week....

The answer was to prepare a menu where as much as possible was done in advance (and actually, the flavours tasted better for it) and was sufficiently robust to satisfy the carnivores too!

I made a Moroccan vegetable stew, which was rich and sweet, and served it with herby-apricot quinoa. For dessert we indulged in chocolate mousse with macaroons and we rounded everything off with an amazing cheese board (a birthday present from my lovely friend, Kaye).

The stew was really easy and the recipe allows for lots of personal variation....

Ingredients:

• Selection of vegetables (I used 1 fennel bulb, 1 red onion, 2 carrots, 1 aubergine, 1 red pepper)
• 400g tin of chickpeas
• Selection of Moroccan spices (I used a mix from Schwartz but you could just use ground cumin, coriander seed and cinnamon)
• Olive oil
• 800g (2 tins) of chopped tomatoes (I used the ones with added garlic)
• Handful of chopped apricots
• Handful of raisins
• Moroccan tagine paste (optional - I used Salisbury's paste from their Cooks Ingredients section, but you could just mix oil, tomato puree, seasoning and a spoon of your spice mix to get a similar product
• Cinnamon stick (optional)

1. Chop all your vegetables into cube and mix with 1 tbsp of your spice mix and a good glug of oil
2. Roast these for 40 mins (suggest 180c/GM 3)
3. Whilst roasting is underway, mix your tomatoes, 1 tbsp paste, cinnamon stick, drained chickpeas, raisins and apricots in a pan and simmer on a low heat
4. When you vegetables are roasted, tip into your tomato mix and stir through

You can eat this straight away, but I think the flavours infuse more if you leave overnight.

I prepared a simple side of quinoa and apricots to serve this with. You can replace the quinoa with cous cous, bulgar wheat, orzo etc...

To make this, simply cook the appropriate amount of your chosen grain and mix with chopped apricots (use the juicy plump ones or alternatively simmer them in water to plump up first), pistachios, pine nuts, lemon zest, lemon juice, chopped flat leaf parsley, chopped mint, olive oil and seasoning. Clearly, you can easily adapt this with whatever you've got to hand! Flaked almonds are a nice addition too.

Pudding was a pretty special chocolate mousse (recipe from Good Food magazine), served with Macaroons (still attempting to master these...definite improvements still to be made!)...

Chocolate Mousse (make 12 hours before...)
Serves 4

• 85g dark chocolate (70% cocoa content - the good stuff!)
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp coffee granules
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 egg whites
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• 50g full-fat greek yoghurt

1. Break chocolate into small pieces and mix in a bowl with the cocoa, coffee, vanilla and 2 tbsp cold water
2. Place bowl over saucepan of simmering water (don't let it touch the water)
3. Stir until melted, then add 2 tbsp boiling water, stir and take off the heat.
4. Whisk egg whites to soft peaks and then add sugar, whisking until thick and glossy
5. Stir yoghurt into your melted chocolate and then gradually fold in your egg whites (don't overmix or you'll lose your air)
6. Spoon into 4 serving dishes (I used cappuccino cups) and chill for 12 hours before serving

You can get the recipe for the Macaroons from my previous post and I made up the chocolate filling as I went (essentially butter, cocoa powder and icing sugar all mixed together to create a thick paste).

Our final course, was a huge selection of cheese, which was delivered to me from The Cheese Society. They have great monthly selections which are such a cool present to receive and soooooooo yuummy!

I stamped the names of the cheeses out with a cute little stamp set I bought from Muji. On the assumption that you've not got one of these immediately to hand, you could use a little paint brush and squid ink/food colouring....

...it's very helpful when you're drunk and can't remember which is which!! The Cheese Society send you cheese tasting notes too, which is fun. My favourite was the Duddleswell, firm and creamy, mmmm....

So there you have it! The vegetarian feast for non-vegetarians too. It's actually quite an apt post, as it's National Vegetarian Week from the 24th to the 30th of May! Coincidence rather than planning!

Coming up next week, adventures in pasta, hasty pastry and the introduction of Herman the German cake of friendship...(all will be explained!).

Much love,
Helen x

Read more...