Classic Chocolate Cake

Get your chocolate fix with this strikingly simple chocolate cake. 

Who doesn’t love cake? This is a great basic cake recipe that everyone should know. I remember the first time I made a cake, my mum helped but didn't know what to do when the eggs curdled, so we rang my dad (who was at work) and badgered him to instruct us remotely. That cake turned out well and ever since I've remembered the mantra four, four, four, and two (4oz sugar, 4oz butter, 4oz self-raising flour and 2 eggs)  or six, six, six, and three (6oz sugar, 6oz butter, 6oz self-raising flour and 3 eggs) for a sandwich cake, ever since and it has proved invaluable when a cake is needed in short order.

Topping the cake with a simple ganache elevates a simple cake to a whole new level and will impress anyone.

Making Mascarpone

This weekend I attended a food writing course at All Hallows Farmhouse in Dorset, taught by the wonderful Karen Barnes of delicious. magazine. I learnt how to improve all aspects of my writing and I hope that you will see changes going forward. There will now be a section on my blog devoted to pieces that I feel are more than just recipes, such as memories, stories and listicles (10 things you may not know about spices coming soon). Below is a 200 word exercise written after Lisa, from All Hallows, showed us how easy it is to make Mascarpone.

Birthday Dessert

I turned 22 on the 26th of December and was sick of cakes after a spate of birthdays recently. Initially I decided to have a birthday starter instead (of cheese soufflé) but one of my friends posting a photo of some caramel that she was making swayed me in favour of homemade vanilla ice cream drizzled with salted caramel (my current, and long-lasting, weakness - last year's cake was a set of salted caramel fondants). Previously I've always bought in my salted caramel sauce from the excellent Artisan du Chocolat in London as I don't want to see just how bad for me it is, but they sadly don't have an outpost in Poitiers nor Talmont (they should really look into that) so I had to bite the bullet and make it myself.

First off, I'm sorry but it is as bad for you as you think it is, however, it's even more scrumptious than you think it will be so just enjoy it! My pan of caramel is currently cooling and every time I pass it I take a spoonful, thankfully there's a lot of it!

Decadent Dinner Party Chocolate Tart

I hosted a dinner party last night. I'm currently curled up on the sofa remembering the awesome, if I say so myself, food, and less fondly, the amount of alcohol. I'm not hungover, before you say anything, but absolutely shattered and full to the brim. It was meant to be a meal for 7 but the day before people started dropping like flies so it wound up being the me, Grace and her boyfriend, Dom eating curries with pilau rice and homemade naan, followed by vanilla ice-cream (the first time I made it) and a double chocolate tart with amaretto, which is the recipe that I'm sharing with you today. The other recipes will follow.

The recipe is from Tom Kerridge's recent TV show and his version has sugar coated almonds and coffee cream plus even more chocolate. Whilst chocolate is never a bad thing there was rather lot of it - three quarters of a kilo to be precise! I kept the amaretto as it tastes really good, though you can omit it if you need to. Try not to be tempted to add more as the flavour really does develop over time. Also, the best/only type of amaretto sold in England is Disaronno Originale, a fact that I didn't know until I asked someone at Waitrose if they had amaretto and they pointed to the Disaronno right next to me!

Chocolate Tart Recipe

You need a 9" round loose bottomed tart tin for this - it turns out that this is very different from the 8" sandwich tin that I originally was going to use, so if you don't have one then I'm afraid you do need to buy one.

Ingredients

Pastry

175g plain flour

40g cocoa powder

80g icing sugar

140g cold butter, diced 

2 free range egg yolks (preferably medium eggs)

Filling

560g milk chocolate

195g double, or heavy double, cream

90ml amaretto

Method

Pastry

Sift the cocoa, sugar and flour into a large bowl (sifting really is necessary for this one - sorry!).

Add the butter and rub into breadcrumbs, or blitz in a stand mixer - be careful not to over mix it like I did!

Then add the eggs yolks and mix into a dough, adding cold water if it feels dry.

Wrap in cling film and leave in the fridge to rest for an hour (I left mine overnight and it was a bad idea - very solid and then poof, it was suddenly too soft to do much more than rush it).

Preheat the oven to 170˚C.

Lightly flour your work surface (or use The Mat by Sweetwise, like I did) and roll the dough out so that it is large enough to fit in the tin and about half a centimetre thick.

Gently place the rolled dough over the case and carefully press the dough into the corners of the tin (if there's a large extra long piece of dough then tear it off, wrap it in cling film and use that to press the dough into the tin).

Line with baking parchment and then baking beans and place in the oven for 25 minutes before removing the beans and parchment and returning the pastry to the oven for another 10 minutes to dry it out.

Once it has cooled firm the excess dough off the edges of the pastry case.

Filling

Using a bain marie (see Coeliac brownies post) melt the chocolate over a low heat.

Pour the cream and amaretto into a pan and heat until boiling.

Add the cream and amaretto mix to the chocolate and stir until incorporated.

Put the ganache that you've just made into the cooled pastry case and leave to cool.

Once the ganache has cooled, place into the fridge for at least 30 minutes so that it sets (In my case I had to put it into a cake carrier and then on my balcony as the fridge was too full!!).

Serve with ice cream (vanilla or coffee would be best).

Do you like double chocolate or do you find chocolate desserts too sweet?

Oops, sorry - this evidently refused to post yesterday!!