Ultimate Chocolate Cake

I had intended to update this a little more frequently, but it seems time has run away with me. I might aim for at least one post a week from now on though. There's always more cake to be made. I think I need a cake shop soon so that I can share them with the world. I'd definitely have a 'cake of the week' so I could carry on trying new and exciting recipes!

I have two fabulous recipes to share. The first is a chocolate cake. The recipe describes it as the ultimate chocolate cake, and I am quite happy to accept that bold claim. I am on an eternal search for the perfect chocolate cake, and with this recipe I have got several steps closer. It's also happily very straightforward. I forgot to take photos (I'll try to next time I make it and then I'll add them), but it happily just works as the recipe says, go Angela Nilsen!
This is the original recipe: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3092/ultimate-chocolate-cake

Ingredients:
200g dark chocolate (60%+)
200g butter, cut into pieces
1 tbsp coffee granules (I didn't have any so brewed some coffee and used 75ml)
85g self raising flour
85g plain flour
1/4 tsp bicarb of soda
200g light muscavado sugar
200g golden caster sugar
25g cocoa powder
3 eggs
75ml buttermilk (I used milk and added a tsp of lemon juice as I heard that had the same effect!)

1. Use a 8"/9" cake tin and line with greaseproof. Preheat oven to 140C if fan, of 160C for normal.

2. Break chocolate into piece in a saucepan and add butter. Mix the coffee granules into 125ml cold water and pour into the pan. Warm through until everything is melted. Or, melt in microwave for 5 mins, stirring half way through

3. While chocolate is melting, mix tother the flours, bicarb, sugars and cocoa, use your hands to get rid of the lumps in the sugar.

4. Beat the eggs in a bowl and stir in the buttermilk

5. Pour the melted choc mix and the egg mix into the flour mix, stirring until everything is well blended and you have a smooth, quite running consistency. Pour into tin and bake for 1 hour 25 mins- 1 hour 30 mins. Leave to cool in the tin

6. When cool, cut the cake into three layers. The recipe calls for chocolate ganache, but I just melted chocolate and butter together in an indeterminate quantity (sorry!) and added icing sugar until it tasted nice!

The ganache would probably be easier though as the cake was very squidgy and liable to come apart a bit!

This is a very, very tasty cake though! I could only eat about half a slice before being completely full. In fact, I made this on Friday night and I still have half a cake to eat..... Need to find some friends to eat it. Mostly I've been sharing around cinnamon rolls.

Speaking of cinnamon rolls. It's a recipe from The Pioneer Woman, and here's the link.

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2007/06/cinammon_rolls_/

I had an idea, which I'm presuming she won't mind, which is that I will 'translate' the recipe into English next time I do it, to save anyone else having to buy any cup measuring thingys. They are totally worth it, though, they taste AMAZING. A fact backed up by everyone who ate them. I've decided to throw a brunch as I also have a new waffle recipe to share. Though I work Saturday mornings, so maybe a 'brunch-type-afternoon-tea?'

Experimental fairy cakes

My house is filled with the lovely smell of triple chocolate cookies, I have a cup of tea in my hand and Mumford and Sons playing. What more could a girl want? Well, aside from a clean kitchen, which I shall go and do shortly ;)

Cookies are one of those strangely temperamental things in life. I'm happy with my choc chip recipe, but triple chocolate poses so many more problems. I now need to wait until the two halves of my batch are both cold and then test them - I made some very slight variations! They seem to come out differently every time, so I'm determined to make them work.

I've had a great weekend once more. Friday I decided to stay awake through the afternoon as I had Saturday off. In true Hannah-style I decided the best way to stay wakeful was to bake. I rang Hannah and so we decided to experiment - what different things can you put into the middle of a fairy cake and what would happen?! And this was the result.....

We just made a normal sponge:
6oz self raising flour
6oz white sugar
6oz marg
2 eggs and a splash of milk (cheapskate version, you can reduce to an egg to 3 oz instead of 2 oz - the cake will still taste great!)

1. Beat marg and sugar together until light and fluffy
2. Add eggs one at a time following each by a spoonful of flour
3. Sieve in rest of flour and fold it in.

For one batch, we took about half the sponge mix and added 50g melted dark chocolate.

We tried:
 - a spoonful of raspberry jam in the middle, with icing sugar sprinkled on top
 - lemon curd - with icing made just with icing sugar mixed with lemon juice
 - marshmallows - with normal glace icing (icing sugar and water)
 - smarties - covered with chocolate ganache I had left in my fridge!
 - kit kats, covered in melted dark chocolate with a little butter added to make it shiny!

We put a spoonful of cake mix in the bottom of the paper case, then added whatever else we were going to, and then put more cake on top (aside from the kit kats, which we just mixed in)

The jam worked well, as did the lemon curd. Though next time I'd probably only use a teaspoonful of lemon curd rather than the rather overloaded tea spoon I used that time!

Marshmallows were a comedic fail! We melted the marshmallows together which was fun, and put a spoonful in. The (slightly obvious ;)) result was that the marshmallow got absorbed into the cake mix and so once they came out of the oven they sank. They didn't taste much different to normal cupcakes either, but it was fun all the same! The smarties sank and the biscuit centre of the kit kats went rather odd. Still, it was a very fun afternoon, and the kit kat ones were the most well-behaved aesthetically speaking ;)

I also made the muffins I posted about last week but tried adding frozen raspberries too. The result was gorgeous, but wherever the raspberries ended up you ended up with major sinkage. Next time I'd break the raspberries up so that wouldn't happen!

I then went to watch the next episode of Doctor Who. Great episode. Very, very funny. The next episode looks terrifying though, and is a double parter - so I'll leave it at week and watch it at my brother's house by myself so I can fast forward through all the scary bits!

I have left over pan fried pizza in my fridge for tea, a recipe I should share soon as it's great, tasty, and very quick to make! I have a 5am start tomorrow morning due to the fact that I'm not sure if it's 5 or 6am. I went to check the board this afternoon and it said 6am, but now I'm worried I wasn't checking the right week. I just really don't want to get it wrong! Maybe I'll go for 5.30 and then it can't go too wrong either way?!

Thanks for reading. Hope your weekends have been good!

Fudgy Chocolate Muffins

Just over two manic weeks later.... Mickey Mouse was successfully finished, and came out pretty well I thought. Then Hannah and I had a wedding cake to make - such a pretty statue on top provided by the bride. It was the first cake I've made with pillars, which was a new and exciting challenge. It's always terrifying when you make the cake nice and smooth and then you have to stick a piece of dowling through it and pray that you've got it in the right place 'cos there's no going back!

My forearms are currently in some major pain due to my first two weeks as a baker. Dough is heavy, and I have to roll a LOT out! Nevertheless it's much more fun than sitting in an office being ranted at. The 5am starts are a little traumatic, but I guess I'll get used to them - currently I'm getting good at sleeping in the afternoons. Had a beautiful 3 hour nap today to make up for the early start and lack of sleep yesterday. 

So I decided to share my new favourite chocolate muffin recipe. I made some for all of us girls at our church small group weekend away and the recipe was demanded by all, so here it is for your delectation and delight! We got to go pony trekking - I even cantered... terrifying but fun, and I had a very cute horse.

Chocolate fudge muffins

Makes 9 Muffins. 190C or 170C fan oven

150g light muscavado sugar

3 eggs

80g butter

100g dark chocolate (70%+)

80g plain flour

150g chopped white chocolate (original recipe had chocolate coated oranges)

30g pecans or other nuts (optional)

1. Melt butter and chocolate together (I seriously love the smell of this mix, heavenly!)

2. Whisk together sugar and eggs for about 5 minutes until lighter in colour, thick and mousse-like

3. Whisk butter/choc mixture into the egg/sugar mix

4. Sieve in flour with a pinch of salt and stir in flour and chocolate/nuts

5. Spoon into 9 muffin cases

6. Cook for 20 minutes, until risen and firm. Don't worry if they sink a bit after they've been cooked. 

If you want to make them chocolate orange muffins just add 1 tsp orange extract.

Enjoy :)