It’s my friend’s birthday this week and I wanted to make something suitably delicious and gifty to mark the occasion. Celebrations would be taking place in a bar after work which slightly dictated the format my baking could take; I wanted something fairly dainty so people could stand and chat without having to manage too many stray sticky crumbs, but also something with strong enough flavours to still pack a punch several vodkas into the evening.
Tag Archives: dessert
Chocolate biscuit birthday cake
A couple of weeks ago a certain young couple tied the knot amidst a media frenzy. As they prepared for the big day (I imgine thanking a higher being for their respective soon-to-be enlarged bank account and expanded gene pool), the nation (and beyond) became obsessed with every detail of the wedding; who would be attending, what they’d be wearing, the flowers, the food, the drink and, of course, that dress.
The hot topic closest to my little loaf heart, however, was who would be making the cake. This honour fell to the fabulous Fiona Cairns, who produced a suitably stunning creation, but, not being a huge fruit cake fan, what really caught my eye was Prince William’s chocolate biscuit groom’s cake. Apparently this simple slab of unbaked chocolate, butter and biscuits is a childhood favourite of William’s. Not hugely regal or royal – I love the thought of dignitaries from around the world munching on what is essentially a glorified Rice Krispie cake – but totally delicious and a funny insight into a slightly more human side of the Windsor family.
Chocolate biscuit, or refrigerator, cake is a firm favourite in my family, and has been since childhood (nope, I’m not secretly a member of the royal family, although we clearly share a similarly sophisticated palate when it comes to cake. . .). My mum used to make it for birthdays in a bunny-shaped mould, presenting the giant chocolate rabbit shape on a bed of green jelly grass. The height of six year old sophistication. Over the years our biscuit cake has matured and we now serve it in thin, rich slices, laced with dried fruit and booze as an alternative to Christmas cake. But at heart it’s still a birthday treat, so when my aunt asked me to bake a cake for my cousin’s 21st, we knew it had to be chocolate biscuit.
Making a cake for fifty people is no mean feat. This concoction required a kilo of chocolate, a tin of golden syrup, enough slabs of butter to block your arteries just by looking at them, a vast packet of digestives (McVities take note, apparently Will’s cake was made with Rich Tea biscuits. Schoolboy error.) and a whole box of eggs. Chocolate biscuit cake, while incredible to eat, is hardly very elegant, so I also whizzed up butter, sugar and cocoa to create a thick buttercream frosting to mask the lumpy bumpy bits – totally unnecessary but actually rather delicious to have that contrast between the cool, crunchy cake and soft, creamy icing. I topped the whole thing off with some beautiful homemade chocolate roses (actually really easy, read my earlier post for instructions here) and was pretty happy with the final result. It certainly got polished off pretty quick by the hungry crowds.
A cake fit for a King? Who knows, it might just make the grade.
Chocolate biscuit cake for 50
(For a more manageable recipe simply divide each quantity by 5)
Ingredients:
625g butter
375g golden syrup
1kg dark chocolate, minimum 60% cocoa solids, broken into pieces
5 eggs
500g digestive biscuits
250g walnuts
Method:
Grease and line two large cake tins (I used one 20″ and one 22″ square) and set aside.
Melt together the butter and golden syrup in a large pan. Melt the chocolate in a bain marie, then mix throughly with the butter and syrup mixture. Pasteurise the eggs by beating slowly and continuously into the hot chocolate mixture.
Put the biscuits in a large plastic bag and beat with a rolling pin until broken into a mixture of powder and larger chunks. Do the same with the walnuts then add to the chocolate mixture and stir until fully incorporated. You could also add raisins or other dried fruit at this stage if you wish, along with a splash of rum or other alcohol.
Press the mixture into the prepared tins and chill in the fridge for a minimum of 5 hours.
Buttercream frosting
Ingredients:
500g icing sugar
200g butter, softened
2 tsp vanilla extract
Dash of milk
4 tbsp cocoa powder
Method:
Blitz the sugar and butter in a blender. Add vanilla extract and enough milk until a thick, creamy frosting is formed. Transfer approximately 1/4 of the mixture into a small bowl and pop in the fridge (this is for the paler piping you can see in the pic). Add the cocoa powder to the remaining mixture and blitz until fully incorporated.
Remove the cakes from the fridge. Transfer the larger cake onto a plate or cake board and layer the next one on top, securing together with a small amount of icing. Cover the cakes in a smooth layer of chocolate buttercream, then pipe the plain vanilla frosting round the edges. Decorate with chocolate roses, then return to the fridge and chill. Remove from the fridge around 40 mins before you want to serve to allow the flavours to really come through.
Did you know? When googling Will’s groom’s cake I read that while a classic wedding cake is served to the guests at the wedding reception, the groom’s cake is meant to be sliced up, placed into packages and given to them as favours when they leave. Single women at the wedding would take their pieces of cake home and sleep with it under their pillows in hopes of dreaming of their future husbands… (!) Bizarre advice and not something I’d recommend. Chocolate biscuit cake is meant for eating and will likely result in a hugely sticky mess if left under your pillow (although on reflection it would provide a pretty good midnight feast…)
How to make chocolate roses
When I was little, our go-to recipe for birthdays and parties was a rich chocolate fudge cake from Josceline Dimbleby’s The Cook’s Companion. Delicious and fail-safe (even prepared by clumsy little hands), it was wonderfully adaptable; we’d often multiply or divide the ingredients to suit the number of guests, and the rich, fudgey sponge worked beautifully whether slathered in icing, dusted in sugar or simply on its own.
As I got older, this wonderful tome also became introduction to a world of decorating beyond my existing repertoire of hundreds and thousands, candied lemon, silver balls and squiggles of lurid writing icing. The most exciting ‘recipe’ was one for chocolate leaves. You simply took a few veiny (non-poisonous) leaves from the garden or unsuspecting neighbour, painted the underside in melted chocolate then froze them, before peeling away the leaf to reveal a perfect replica. Magical aged seven, and still pretty fun now . . .
Fast-forward almost twenty years and I promised to make a birthday cake for my cousin’s 21st birthday. Chocolate biscuit for 50 people to be precise (eat your heart out Prince William). A biscuit cake isn’t the most beautiful of things to look at, so I had it in mind to tiers, iced to hide all the funny bumpy bits of biscuit, and thought I’d decorate it with some kind of edible thing. Chocolate leaves felt a bit old hat, and I wondered if I could try my hand at flowers.
I first heard about cocoform watching an episode of Cake Boss. If you haven’t seen it, Cake Boss is a hilarious documentary about the larger than life (quite literally) Buddy Valastro and his New Jersey family bakery. Think The Sopranos with bigger bellies, fewer guns, more rolling pins and even more drama. They produce these incredible multi-tiered, mega-complex cakes – life size animals, volcanoes with lava flowing out, treasure chests, tables of pretend food and, the best episode I’ve seen yet, the whole set of Sesame Street complete with the complete cast of characters made from cocoform. Otherwise known as modelling chocolate, which is 100% more fun to say in a Noo Joysey accent.
About the same time as I’d decided that cocoform, or modelling chocolate, was the way to go with my flowers, I read a post by The Pink Whisk (otherwise known as baking blogger extraordinaire Ruth Clemens) about how to make sugar roses. I sent her a note to see if I could use the same method with my chocolate versions. It wasn’t quite the same technique, but pretty similar, so last night I set about making my roses.
These flowers are based on some sound advice from The Pink Whisk here, and also a great tutorial I found on Cake on the Brain, here. I won’t bother to repeat the process as they do a much better job, and Cakebrain even illustrates the process with beautiful photos. I’m pretty pleased with my first attempt at roses, and her post has received over 60 comments to date, so she must be doing something right. These roses took about 20 minutes to make from opening the packet of cocoform, so really not a major effort in the grand scheme of things. I hope Josceline would be proud.
Final note: I bought my modelling chocolate from Squires Kitchen. The packs cost a whopping £4.99 for 150g but I understand you can achieve the same plasticky effect by melting plain chocolate with corn syrup. Definitely one to try next time.
Salty Snickers macarons
Salty chocolate & caramel macarons
There’s no denying it, the Americans know how to do dessert. The rise of mouthwatering confection meccas like The Hummingbird Bakery means we’ve come to think nothing of putting away giant slabs of brownie, cupcakes smothered in inches of icing and whoopie pies the size of cricket balls. Dessert has become super-sweet, super-sized, and certainly not subtle.
Chunky chocolate, raisin & walnut cookies
The perfect chocolate chunk cookie?
A couple of weeks ago I posted the results of my recent quest for the perfect chocolate chunk cookie. Dense and chewy, with a crispy edge and large dark chocolate chunks, these giant cookies were definitely up there. But perfection isn’t a finite thing, and yesterday I decided to rustle up another batch, using the lessons I’d learnt from last time round.
Honey-soaked carrot cake
Watching an episode of River Cottage on TV the other day, I was momentarily transported by Hugh and his crew into the romantic rural idyll that is their world. A place where bread is always freshly baked, beautiful ripe fruit drips from the trees, butter is churned before the cow can even bat an eyelid, and spring lambs and rosie-cheeked children skip side-by-side across verdant pastures . . . A little far-fetched perhaps, but I think you get my drift. It’s a pretty far cry from the scraggy bush of rosemary cowering between two giant weeds that constitutes my little London garden anyway.
That’s not to say a girl can’t dream. Or indeed cook her way through a whole array of culinary highlights by way of some gorgeous recipe books (and let’s be honest, it’s mostly the food I’m after; stick me in a pair of muddy wellies in deepest Devon and I’d probably be howling for the bright lights and my local Waitrose after a shamefully short period of time). I’ve already sung the praises of The River Cottage Bread Handbook in a previous post, and River Cottage Every Day, a more recent purchase, is even better, packed with beautiful photos and gorgeous, simple recipes that really work first time.
This carrot cake is one of those recipes. We went to a leaving party this weekend for a friend who’s jetting off to a new job abroad and I wanted to bake a surprise cake to mark the occasion. After a bit of devious digging I discovered that carrot cake was the thing that would really hit the spot.
There’s a lot of hype around vegetables in cakes at the moment from the likes of low-fat champion Harry Eastwood (I’m yet to try one of her Petit Pois cupcakes but they look intriguing); the replacement of butter with nutritious vegetables adds moisture and reduces fat meaning you really can have your cake and eat it. However while our constant need to innovate means that courgette, beetroot and pumpkin have briefly replaced the humble carrot at the top of the pile, this recipe reminds you that the original sometimes is still simply the best.
The recipe below will serve at least twelve comfortably, more if you do as I did and stuff and smother it with a rich cream cheese frosting (totally unnecessary as Hugh points out but utterly indulgent and delicious). It’s light on spice so you could throw in a little cinammon if you like. I think it would also be wonderful with a handful of walnuts thrown in, or some syrupy sultanas if you’re feeling fruity.
Honey-soaked carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (from River Cottage Every Day)
Ingredients:
- 4 medium free range
- 150g caster sugar (use golden for a slightly caramel flavour)
- 150ml each rapeseed and sunflower oil (I used a mixture of ground nut and sunflower which worked perfectly)
- 350g carrots, peeled and finely grated
- 300g wholemeal self-raising flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 100g runny honey
Cream cheese frosting:
- 125g unsalted butter, softened
- 200g icing sugar, sieved
- 250g cream cheese
- Finely grated zest of 2 limes
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Grease and line a 23cm cake pan.
Put the eggs and sugar in a large mixing bowl and beat together with a hand held electric mixture for about 10 minutes, until pale, foamy and slightly thickened. Yes, your hand will feel like it’s going to fall off with all the vibrations, but the mixture does need this time to get nice and aerated. Add the oil and beat for a couple of minutes more.
Sift together the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda into the mixture. Tip any bran left in the sieve into the mixture too. Fold in gently. Finally, fold in the grated carrot. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Put the honey in a saucepan over a low heat and heat gently until the honey is liquid. Pierce the hot cake all over with a skewer then slowly pour on the hot honey so it soaks into the cake. Leave in the tin to cool completely before turning out.
As Hugh says in the book, this cake is completely lovely as it is – soft, syrupy and incredibly moist. However for all carrot cake traditionalists out there, smothering it in a tart cream cheese frosting is the ultimate indulgence. Simply sling the soft butter and icing sugar into a magimix and whizz til smooth and fluffy. Add the cream cheese and lime zest and whizz again until smooth. Once cold, slice the cake in half, stuff it with icing then sandwich the two halves together and smother with the remaining frosting. De-lish.
Banana, chocolate & walnut loaf
Sticky, moist banana loaf
Over the last few days I’ve seen quite a few blog posts cropping up with recipes recommending what to do with leftover Easter chocolate. Rocky road, tiffin, brownies, rice crispy cakes, chocolate cake, chocolate sauce and more; these are all suitably worthy resting places for those sad little eggs and shells that didn’t quite make it into the Easter morning binge. But to be honest, I’ve never really had this issue of ‘egg-cess’ (sorry), having subscribed to more of an ‘all or nothing’ approach to anything sweet from a young age. Consuming my own body weight in chocolate before Easter breakfast has now become pretty much standard practice.
Having said that, yesterday a little bit of Easter egg chocolate did manage to sneak its way into the mixing bowl as I was making my favourite banana loaf recipe. I’d returned home after Easter to a pile of soft, slightly blackened bananas and needed a recipe to salvage them pretty quickly, This sticky, moist banana loaf was the perfect answer- in fact, it simply doesn’t taste the same if the bananas you use aren’t blackened, squidgy and sickly sweet. And the addition of a few nuggets of deliciously dark chocolate prevents the richness of the banana from becoming overpowering.
Banana, chocolate & walnut – the perfect combination
I mentioned a few weeks ago my discovery of a delicious banana, chocolate and walnut loaf recipe on Gourmet Traveller ‘s blog. I’ve made it a few times since, tweaking the ingredients here and there, and the result is always spot on – dense, moist and nutty inside, crusty and golden on the top, with a richly intense banana flavour and little hits of chocolate. This loaf is delicious as a dessert with natural Greek yoghurt or vanilla ice cream, the perfect tea-time snack served straight up, or an incredible indulgence toasted and smothered in butter. It’s really more of a cake than a loaf though, so arteries take heed if you do decide to go for this final option.
Banana, Chocolate and Walnut Loaf
(adapted from a Gourmet Traveller recipe)
4 large ripe bananas
100g unsalted butter, slightly soft
140g soft brown sugar
2 large free range eggs
50g walnuts, chopped
50g dark chocolate (70% cocoa minimum), chopped
150ml semi-skimmed milk
140g plain flour
140g wholemeal flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 level tbsp demerara sugar
Preheat the oven to 160°C. Grease a 900g (2lb) loaf tin with butter and line the base with baking parchment.
Peel and roughly mash the bananas with a fork. In a separate large mixing bowl, whisk the butter and sugar together until pale and creamy. Crack in the eggs and whisk further to combine, then stir in the mashed banana, walnuts, chocolate and milk. Stir thoroughly to incorporate all the ingredients – the banana means there may be a few lumps.
Sift the flours and bicarbonate of soda into the bowl and gently fold into the wet mixture until just combined. The key here is to work carefully to preserve the lightness of the cake batter. Pour the batter into your prepared loaf tin and sprinkle with the demerara sugar.
Bake in the oven for 1 hour – you’ll know it’s done when a metal skewer inserted in the middle comes out mostly clean. If it’s still wet with batter, pop your loaf back in the oven for another 15 minutes, covering with foil if the top is browning too much. When cooked, remove from oven and leave to sit for 5 minutes before transferring the loaf out onto a wire ack to cool completely.
Chocolate & Dulce de Leche Brownies
If you’ve read many of my previous posts on this blog, you’ll know that I love chocolate and I love baking. It’s been a while since I last made brownies, and a pre-Easter dinner party at a friend’s flat this week seemed like the perfect excuse to try a new recipe. I’ve been reading David Lebowitz‘s gorgeous blog for a while now, and amongst a number of delicious looking recipes, I’d bookmarked these amazing looking Dulce de Leche brownies.
If you’ve not tried Dulce de Leche before, now is your moment. Literally ‘milk sweetness’ or ‘milk candy’, it’s an unctuously thick caramel-like sauce made from sweetened condensed milk, and one of the most delicious things you’re ever likely to put in your mouth. Continue reading
The perfect chocolate chunk cookie
The perfect chocolate chunk cookie?
If I had a pound for every blog post out there talking about the quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie, I would be a very rich girl. Whether it’s UK bloggers lamenting the lack of good recipes using metric measurements, or US bloggers vying for the ultimate ‘just like Mom used to make’ recipe, chocolate chip cookie chat is definitely a hot topic on the baking agenda of the blogosphere.
And not without good reason. There’s nothing better than sinking your teeth into thick, chewy American style cookie, soft in the middle, crispy and buttery round the edges and studded with bittersweet chocolate chunks. We’re not talking ‘dip in your tea and nibble appreciatively’ British style biscuit here, this is a full on super-sweet indulgence best enjoyed with a complete lack of guilt and a giant glass of cold milk.
Balls of delicious cookie dough
I recently made a batch of crispy chewy oatmeal and raisin cookies. Oaty, nutty and possibly slightly too worthy, they got me thinking about other cookie recipes to try, and I began my search for the ultimate chocolate chunk cookie recipe (note chunk, not chip – I think coarse chunks of chopped dark chocolate deliver a far superior cookie to their oversweet, manufactured cousin the chip).
After trawling my favourite foodie sites, I was delighted to find that a fellow blogger had already done most of the legwork for me. I arrived at Signe Johansen’s blog Scandilicious through Google search and will definitely be returning to read her simple, beautiful compilation of recipes and foodie thoughts. Signe’s ‘quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie’ took her on a journey through baking books and tweets, allowing her to incorporate tips from various seasoned bakers while weeding out any strange or over-the-top suggestions. The result is the recipe below, which I knew I had to try as soon as I saw her pictures.
Chewy, crispy and not too sweet, with delicious chunks of dark chocolate, this one’s going straight to the top of my ultimate chocolate chunk cookie leader board. I think it’s going to be hard to top, but if you think you’ve got a better recipe I’d love to try it out so please get in touch!
Incredible giant chocolate chunk cookies (adapted from Signe Johansen’s blog)
Ingredients
- 300g plain white flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 180g salted butter, melted
- 200g light brown muscovado sugar
- 100g golden caster sugar
- 1 large free range egg plus one large yolk
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 150g dark chocolate, 70% cocoa minimum, coarsely chopped
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 160 C/ 325 F. Line two baking sheets with baking parchment and set aside.
- Sieve together the flour, baking powder and sea salt.
- Whisk together the melted butter together with both sugars, then add the large egg, extra yolk and vanilla to the mixture. Whisk again and then stir in the flour, beating the mixture for a few minutes to stretch the gluten strands.
- Fold in the chocolate chips. The cookie dough should feel almost dry now, like a solid lump (Signe says she wishes she’d taken photo at this stage to illustrate, so I made sure I did!) – don’t let the chocolate chips cluster in just one part of the dough.
- Opinion varies on whether to chill the dough before baking or just cook straight away. I was hungry and impatient, but it was a pretty large batch of dough so I divided the mixture in two, chilling half and spooning the other half onto the tray with an ice cream scoop (To note, ice cream scoop sized dough balls result in HUGE cookies!)
- Bake for 15-18 minutes until the cookies are golden, the sides feel firm-ish to the touch but the centre is still quite soft. This is really important as you don’t want to overcook and lose that slight squidgy texture.
- Cooling the cookies on the baking sheets helps keep their chewy consistency so I’d definitely recommend this.
- Once cooled, remove from the tray and serve or store in an air tight container. Yum.
(I made the second batch of chilled dough into smaller cookies, about 2/3 of the size of the palm of my hand. The resulting cookie was chewier and crispier but I’m not sure if this was down to size difference or the fact that I’d chilled it. Not a very fair experiment but I’m not that fussed, both batches tasted incredible)
Little Black Dress Chocolate Cake
A simple, incredible chocolate cake is like a little black dress; everyone should have one in their culinary wardrobe. So says Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall of River Cafe and Cottage fame. I’m not sure about Hugh’s taste in in evening wear, but his ‘Easy rich chocolate cake’ from River Cottage Everyday is definitely the kind of staple recipe every girl should have up her sleeve. Rich, moist and velvety, this is an intense chocoholic hit, and the perfect dessert to rustle up for any occasion.
I made this for a group of friends for Sunday lunch and served it with a wickedly indulgent thick whiskey cream . . . Sadly I don’t have any photos of this- by the time I had my camera out the whole bowl had been wolfed.
Warning *excess consumption of said little black cake may result in inability to fit into your favourite little black dress*
Easy rich chocolate cake (from River Cottage Everyday)
Serves 10
250g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
250g unsalted butter, cubed
4 eggs, whites and yolks separated
100g caster sugar
100g soft brown or muscovado sugar
50g plain flour
50g ground almonds
Grease and line a 23cm springform cake tin and preheat the oven to 170 degrees C/Gas Mark 3.
Melt butter and chocolate together and leave to cool.
Meanwhile whisk together the egg yolks and sugar til well combined., then add the cooled chocolate mixture. Combine the flour and almonds and fold these in, too.
In separate bowl, whisk the egg whites til they hold firm peaks. Stir large spoonful of egg white into the chocolate mixture to loosen it, then carefully fold in the rest of the whites, taking care to keep in as much air as possible. Use lrge metal spoon – this will keep the cake light and velvety.
Pour the mixture into the tin and bake in the preheated oven for approx. 30 mins until just set. I checked mine after 25 and suggest you do the same. It should still be slightly wobbly in the centre – this will then set into a sticky, fudgy chocolate dream once cooled. Leave at least 15 mins before releasing from the tin and serving with boozy whiskey cream (recipe below).
Whiskey cream
200ml thick whipping cream
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
Good slug of your favourite whiskey
Whip cream, then stir in sugar and whiskey, adjusting measures to taste. Taste again. One more spoon. . . And serve.