Thursday 11 March 2010

Dark Chocolate Mousse Cake


When your lovely boyfriend treats you to a baking book (one which you've been drooling over in the shop window for weeks) the only decent thing to do is to allow him to pick the first recipe to be made from it!

As with most chocolate recipes this one requires patience in the form of waiting for the suspended chocolate mixture to melt over the hob, but to be honest thats my favourite part - I don't know how successful speeding up the process in the microwave would be, I have my apprehensions and I especially didn't want to spoil this one so I did it by the book.

Incredibly rich but nonetheless delicious (and gluten-free!) half of the cake was gone within 10 minutes of it being out of the oven, the gooey middle was still steaming. Thank you Green and Blacks :-)


Serves 10 (ish)

Ingredients:

1 tbsp Ground Almonds
300g Dark Chocolate (Minimum 60% cocoa solids), broken into pieces
275g Caster Sugar
165g Butter
1/2 tsp Sea Salt
5 Large Eggs

Ground almonds to dust the tin
Icing Sugar to dust the cake

Directions:

Brush a 8" cake tin with butter and sprinkle some ground almonds, shaking off any excess.

Melt the chocolate, caster sugar, butter and salt in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water. Making sure that the bottom of the bowl is not touching the water and that no steam will be able to come into contact with the ingredients. Once melted remove from the heat and set to one side.

Whisk the eggs with the ground almonds and fold into the chocolate mixture. After a few minutes the mixture will thicken and stick to itself, somewhat resembling flubber.

Pour into the cake tin and bake for 35 - 40 minutes in a preheated oven at 180 degrees.

If you are not using a cake tin with a removable base, loosen the edges of the cake away from the tin and leave to cool slightly for a couple of minutes before turning it out onto a plate. Allow another 5 or so minutes of cooling time before dusting the beauty with icing sugar.

Sunday 7 March 2010

Green Tea Cupcakes


Cupcakes have got to be the best comfort food going, you can't really go wrong with them as you just chuck all of the ingredients in a bowl and succumb to the will of the electric mixer! And the whole process tends to take less than half an hour!

I was about to make some unadventurous cappuccino cupcakes but then I had a moment of caffeine-free inspiration. Furthermore, the amount of detoxifying and beneficial qualities in green tea outweighs the calorific content naturally inherent to cupcakes...probably...possibly.

Makes 12

Ingredients:

150g Unsalted Butter
175g Self-raising Flour
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
1 tsp Almond Essence
125g Caster Sugar
25g Light Brown Sugar
3 Medium Eggs
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp of Green Tea

For the frosting:

150g Butter
250g Icing Sugar
2 tsp Green Tea

Directions:

Put all of the cake ingredients into a large mixing bowl and beat (preferably with a handheld electric mixer) until light and creamy.

Spoon into cupcake cases to about 2/3 full. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for 15 minutes, until just risen and golden on top. Allow to cool before frosting.

To make the green tea frosting, put the ingredients into a bowl and once again mix with an electric mixer, add more icing sugar if the mixture is too runny - you don't want it to slide off of your cakes. You can either fashion a piping bag out of a square of greaseproof paper, or a plastic bag - failing that just use the back of a spoon in a circular motion to smoothly and evenly cover the cakes.

Blondies


I was going to the cinema with a group of friends and thought, mmmm brownies would be good to take in to nibble on when I momentarily get bored of popcorn - but alas, I have no chocolate! (And rarely get bored of popcorn). Blondies it is then. These treats are so deceptive they look and feel very cakey but in fact the texture is rather dense and chewy. Definitely be generous with the cinnamon.

Makes about 16 bars

Ingredients:

350g Plain Flour
150g Butter (softened)
2 Large Eggs
150g Light Brown Sugar
150g White Sugar
2 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Nutmeg
1 tsp Salt
1 tbsp Vanilla
2 tbsp Milk

Icing Sugar to dust

Directions:

In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugars. This is pretty difficult with a spoon so your best bet is to give your hands a good wash and then get stuck in there! Make sure you have some kitchen roll nearby for cleaning your hands off after as it gets rather messy. Add the eggs and vanilla to this mixture and set to one side.

In another bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, cream of tartar and salt. Sift and fold these dry ingredients into the buttery-sugary concoction. Add milk (more or less) so that the mixture is just pourable, be cautious though as the blondies will taste better the less runny the mixture is - it's safer to fight with a very sticky dough in this instance!

Pour/Scoop the mixture into the greased and lined baking tray and smooth over the surface with a knife or spatula.

Bake in a preheated oven at 160 degrees for 10 - 15 minutes. If in doubt take them out, these taste perfect just slightly undercooked and gooey in the middle. Cut into bars and dust with icing sugar.

Thursday 4 March 2010

Oaty, Almond and Honey Muffins


After spending about an hour trying to decide what flavour muffins would best satisfy my craving, I settled on this sweet yet heavy variety perfect for a cold wintery evening. I completely experimented with the recipe so it's kind of a dense, muffin-cupcake hybrid. Enjoy :-)

Makes 6 Muffins

Ingredients:

40g Caster Sugar
10g Light Brown Muscovado
150g Plain Flour
2 tbsp Ground Almonds
50g Butter (melted)
80ml Milk
2 Large Eggs
80g Oats
3 tbsp Honey
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Almond Essence
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
1 tsp Cinnamon

Plus some more oats and honey for decoration.

Directions:

Sift the flour into a bowl with both sugars, baking powder, ground almonds, salt and cinnamon (all of the dry ingredients except the oats).

In another bowl combine the melted butter, eggs and milk and then fold in the dry ingredients.

Add almond and vanilla essence and honey and stir well. Finally stir in the oats.

Spoon into muffin cases so that they are just over 2/3 full.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for 15-20 minutes checking regularly.

When the muffins look like they are almost done (by this point they should be relatively well risen but not yet golden coloured) drizzle some honey on each and sprinkle with a few oats before returning then to the oven for a final few minutes.