dessert Archives - Bidmead Bites

Hazelnut fruit cake recipe – Ottolenghi inspired

2nd May 2020 by Eve Bidmead Leave a Comment

The words “Ottolenghi” and “simple” normally don’t go together. Yotam Ottolenghi is well aware of his fame for complicated recipes and hard to source ingredients (as he put it himself in his Guardian column: “I’ve heard the jokes…the one about “just popping out to the local shop to buy the papers, milk, black garlic and sumac”).

He is also a man who moves with the times and recognises peoples’ eternal struggle to find time to cook. This was the inspiration behind his newest cookbook Simple.

If you like Ottolenghi flavours but are put off by the faff, this is the book for you. It includes recipes with 10-or less ingredients, others you can make-ahead of serving, as well as quick meals you can have on the table in under 30 minutes. Within Simple lies one of my favourite cake recipes of all time – a hazelnut sponge with peaches and raspberries.

I’ve tweaked the recipe to give you more options for alternative ingredients because the whole world and his dog are baking at the minute and you’re lucky if you can snag up a bag of flour these days; you can flex this recipe based on what you have to hand.

I also reduced the sugar from 320 to 260 grams – not because I want to make this in any way a “healthy bake” (I think life is way too short for that nonsense). I love the tartness the fruit can provide and don’t want to dim the gloriously nutty richness of the hazelnuts by making the batter overly sweet. It worked really well and I recommend you go for this amount of sugar too.

A note on the fruit: the original recipe calls for 2 large peaches sliced into 1.5 cm wedges + 150 grams raspberries. You could sub apples, plums, apricots, pears…just think, the harder the fruit, the smaller your slices will need to be. For the berries you can use blueberries, strawberries or blackberries, and these can even be frozen. We’re flexing here, but the concept is the same: hazelnut + fruit = winning combo.

Hazelnut + fruits of your choice cake – an Ottolenghi adaptation

Ingredients

450 grams of fruit (I used rhuburb and plum and it was cracking)
260 grams sugar (original recipe calls for white caster, I used golden – either works)
125g hazelnuts (skin off – try to buy them like this as otherwise it’s a bit of a faff, but see here on how to remove the skins if needed)
200 grams unsalted butter (room temperature)
3 large eggs
125 grams plain flour ( if you only have self-raising, half the amount of baking powder)
1.5 tsp baking powder
Tiny pinch of salt

Method

Turn oven to 170 degrees and line a 24cm round cake tin
Mix your fruits with 1 tbsp of sugar and set aside
Grind hazelnuts in a food processor and once roughly ground (under a minute) mix with flour, baking powder and salt in seperate bowl
Beat sugar into the butter – easiest if you use a form of electric whisk
Gradually add eggs to butter mix and then add in your flour hazelnut mix
Pour batter into lined cake tin and place your fruit on top
Bake for 70-80 minutes but cover cake with tin foil after half an hour to avoid it overly browning on top

Ottolenghi says this will keep for a day but I found it perfectly edible after three. In fact, I think the hazelnut flavour got richer over time, so if you do for whatever reason have some left after a day or two, don’t despair.

***And then you’re done – enjoy with a cup of tea and Netflix***

Da Maria, Notting Hill

3rd December 2017 by Eve Bidmead Leave a Comment

Disclaimer: As a North Londoner who’s moved South and rarely visits West, I did not stumble upon this post’s restaurant perchance; it was the review of the great Jay Rayner that led me there. Read his review here.

Italian food is hard to dislike. Pizza, pasta, flavoursome tomatoes and gelato galore, this is a cuisine which can tempt even the pickiest of eaters. It’s seen a bit of a revival of late, moving away from the sea of soulless Bella Italia-esque chain options and into the kitchens of many exciting and trendy small-plate serving central London restaurants (see: Bocca Di Lupo, Polpetto).

Neither a fancy mini-plate affair or part of any kind of chain, Da Maria in Notting Hill offers up Italian food untouched by trends or franchises.

Proper, home-cooked Italian meals made by someone’s Nonna (called Maria, you’ll be surprised to hear) are served on red and white wipe-down table cloths, in a tiny narrow restaurant that seats about 25 people max. The food is inexpensive (the most costly dish is a chicken Milanese at £13, with most main dishes between £6-£9) and the service is full of smiles, strong Italian accents and real Neapolitan spirit.

Eating with a group of Argentines, who if they had it their way would have supper at midnight on a school night, we sat down slightly later to eat. A 9:30pm start meant we had missed the arancini and had to divide the last remaining potato croquette in five. But oh, what a fifth it was! Whipped mashed potato mixed with cheese and coated in a crispy breadcrumb, this starter embodies carbohydrates done right.

Potato croquette and Aubergine parmigiana

We accompanied this with a aubergine parmigiana to share, which was equally well received; the aubergine was silky soft without being oily, topped with fragrant tomato basil sauce which mixed perfectly with the layers of cheese.

Main courses on offer include Neapolitan pizzas, pasta plates and bakes, with meaty options such a chicken cacciatore and meatballs with roast potatoes. Clearly fans of cheesy pasta bakes, my partner and I shared a lasagna and cannelloni between us. I expected bechamel sauce in my lasagna (and would have been positively upset if it didn’t feature), but was surprised to see it on top of the spinach and ricotta filled cannelloni. Combined with the already rich filling, I though the cannelloni would have benefited more from a slightly lighter sauce. The lasagna, rich but rightfully so, was therefore the preferred dish; glorious, meaty oil oozed out of its layers and mixed into the bechamel sauce (no complaints about its presence here).

Spinach & ricotta cannelloni and beef lasagna

For pudding, sadly the Neapolitan cheesecake had run out (another reason to arrive earlier!), but we were amply substituted with a selection of lemon cake, Caprese cake (chocolate and almond) and tiramisu. The lemon cake was sweet with a counter citric twang, and the chocolate cake, with bashed up amaretti biscuits inside, had a great flavour but crumbly texture, which could have benefited from some cream on the side to smooth it altogether.

Trio of puds: Caprese cake, Tiramisu + Lemon cake

The star of the show was the tiramisu, constructed with delicate lady finger biscuits that held their structure despite the drenching of coffee and booze. Sandwiched together with a mascarpone cream, this was the perhaps the best I’ve ever had. All these puddings were topped off perfectly with complimentary servings of limoncello. This is the kind of hospitality that keeps their customers coming back… along with the outstanding lasagna and tiramisu. And really, why would you go to an Italian restaurant to eat anything else?

Da Maria
87 Notting Hill Gate, Kensington, London W11 3JZ

Bizcocho con bocadillo, A Colombian guava cake

24th December 2015 by Eve Bidmead Leave a Comment

Turtle stew, fried lungs and malted fizzy drinks may sound like acquired tastes. But acquire them I did, during my year in Colombia. Certain food items I was less keen on, and I had particular dairy dilemmas when I realised all yogurt was either watery or contained gelatine and came in a jelly-like block. Total greek, Yeo Valley, Rachels Organic, donde estan, I would ask?

Despite my yearning for real yogurt, Colombian cooking captured my heart. Colombian food is never going to compare to classic French cuisine, but it comes from a totally different angle. The main dishes serve to feed and fill a crowd – big stews, rice and meat dishes and a lot of carbohydrates dominate.

With so many regional differences within the culture, Colombian food varies hugely: from the creamy potato and chicken soup ajiaco in cold and central Bogotá to more tropical flavours such as coconut and the fruit chontaduro on the warm yet wet pacific coast. Despite its regionally varied dishes and interesting, complex flavours, Colombian cuisine is still relatively unknown to the British palette, but I’m on a personal mission to make Colombian food more popular within the UK.

There’s a huge Latino population within London and some pockets of the city seem almost entirely Spanish speaking. I think it’s brilliant that I can buy empanada flour, the infamous bright pink fizzy drink postobon and achiote chilli powder less than half an hour away from my house and the fact the cashier will speak to me in Spanish without a second thought.

Corn flour for arepas and empanadas and guava jelly, bought at Brixton market.

With Colombian products so readily available, I decided to recreate one of my favourite Colombian cakes – a wonderfully dense and moist vanilla sponge marbled with bocadillo, a sweet paste made of guava pulp and sugar. I bought my bocadillo in Brixton market and I’m certain you can find it in either Elephant & Castle or Seven Sisters too. If you’re not London based, you can find it here, or you could also use membrillo, the Spanish quince jam available in most larger supermarkets near the cheese.

Enough waffle, time to bake cake.

Bizcocho con bocadillo (Vanilla and guava cake)

Ingredients

-200g flour

-200g butter

-160g sugar

-5 eggs

-100g warm milk

-2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

-300g bocadillo (or membrillo)

-Dash of vanilla extract (1 tsp)

-4 tbsp water

Method

Line a grease a large round cake tin – I used a 9 inch x 3 inch springform pan.
Start your sponge mix by mixing the flour, bicadrbonate of soda and sugar together. Melt the butter completely, leave to cool slightly and whisk into the sugar and flour mixture, adding one egg at a time, mixing it all together. As you whisk add in the 100 ml warm milk and the dash of vanilla extract. Your cake batter is now ready.
To make the bocadillo marble, you need to cut your bocadillo into small cubes and place it in a pan over a low heat, with 2 tbsp of water. As the bocadillo starts to melt down, stir it gently and add the rest of the water (and more if required). Take off the heat. You’re aiming for a liquid consistency you’re able to drizzle, but not something that’s overly runny.
Quickly, as you don’t want the bocadillo to re-solidify, pour half the vanilla mix into the tin and then drizzle in half of the bocadillo mixture, swirling it around to create a marble pattern. Top with the rest of the vanilla mix and then repeat the bocadillo swirls on top.
Bake in the oven for 45-50 minutes, and if top is overly browning, cover with foil. Cake is done when a a knife poked in comes out clean.

Vanilla sponge marbled with bocadillo – A Colombian guava cake, brought all the way to NW London!

A very pretty cake and a bit more exciting than a Victoria Sponge. Give it a go!

A ménage à trois you won’t want to miss – Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Brownies

14th May 2015 by Eve Bidmead Leave a Comment

Sad, sad news people. The absolutely incredible 3 nuts Cookie Dough Peanut Butter I bought in New York at Smorgasberg market ran out last week. I was enjoying it in so many ways : spread on toast, mixed into my porridge, as a key feature in some very delicious chia seed puddings, and in all honesty, more often than not just straight from the jar and into my mouth.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and I managed to pull myself out of my nut butter mourning and launch into recipe creation mode. Looking to recreate the brilliant combination of cookie dough, chocolate chips, and peanut butter, this recipe is a combination of all things good and yum…

Say hello to Peanut Butter Brownie Cupcakes with Cream cheese Cookie Dough icing.

Sweet cream cheese cookie dough icing meets rich cocoa brownies. The rest is history.

The touch of cream cheese with the cookie dough makes for a very smooth, spreadable icing. And it couldn’t be simpler to make! To make the icing I literally whacked everything in my blender and mixed in the chocolate chips at the end. The icing is sweet (of course), but ended up as the perfect topping for the rich chocolate brownie recipe I chose to follow. Taken from the incredible food blog smitten kitchen, this brownie mix uses just cocoa powder rather than melted chocolate.

I tweaked smitten kitchen’s recipe slightly with the addition of swirls of peanut butter (chunky, please) and I opted for a mix of white and brown sugar, as I felt this would provide a good sweet balance against the rich cocoa flavor. I choose to make my brownies in cupcake molds, because…why on earth not?

Peanut Butter Brownie Cupcakes with a Cream cheese Cookie Dough topping

(This recipe is adapted to make 6 cupcake sized brownies, so if using 8×8-inch square baking pan, you’ll need to double it)

– 70 grams unsalted butter

– 60 grams of white caster sugar mixed with 60 grams brown sugar (1 cup)

– 30 grams cocoa powder (this is a little less than 1/2 cup)

– 6 teaspoons of chunky peanut butter (a spoonful for each cake)

– A wee pinch of salt

– 1 egg

– 30 grams self-raising flour (again, a little less than 1/2 cup)

For the Cream cheese Cookie Dough icing

– 1 1/2 tablespoons cream cheese, softened

– 1 1/2 tablespoons butter, softened

– 40 grams brown sugar (1/3 cup)

– Drizzle of milk (if needed. Play this by eye, only adding if it seems too thick).

– 35 grams flour (1/4 cup)

– 70 grams mini chocolate chips (2/3 cup)

Baking the Brownies

1) Get the oven on, and set it to 190 degrees. Grease chosen mold for brownies.

2) Now we want to melt our butter into our cocoa – traditionally done in a heatproof bowl over a pot of boiling water, I actually managed this just fine in a microwave. Blasts of 20 seconds are recommended, just to check you aren’t burning anything. Once combined, add your pinch of salt to the chocolate butter combo.

3) Now we want to add the egg. Use a wooden spoon, and stir in gently.

4) Once the egg is mixed in, it’s time to add in the flour. Fold in until it can no longer be seen, and then your brownie mix is ready! Pour into baking tray/cupcake mold, and on top on each cake nestle in a teaspoon of peanut butter, so that the surface is flat.

Making the icing

1) Place cream cheese, butter, sugar and flour in the blender. Whizz on high speed for about 10-20 seconds until you reach an even consistency. If it’s looking a little lumpy, here’s the time to add in that drizzle of milk.

2) By now you should be seeing a clear dough-like texture. Remove from blender and stir in chocolate chips (and plenty of them).

3) Once your brownies have cooled completely, bang your icing on top.

Now these look good.

But I couldn’t help add in just a little bit more chocolate for good measure. I melted some chocolate in the microwave, and swirled it into the icing…

Because chocolate, on top of chocolate brownies and chocolate chips is never a bad idea. Make these cakes and make some special people very happy. Or…

Just be one very happy baker and munch them all on your own!

Peanut butter, cookie dough and brownie. The sexiest ménage à trois I can think of!

A huge thanks to my lovely roommate and the all-round likable human Juan Kattan for some of these lovely snaps. You can check out some more of his photos on his Tumblr blog.

Fiesta Colombiana!

19th December 2014 by Eve Bidmead Leave a Comment

I’ve had an absolutely great time being back in the UK, catching up with friends and family, soaking up all things British and enjoying what feels like a million cups of tea (and many a mince pie too!). As happy as I am to be reunited with these British delights, I also wanted to share a bit of Colombian cuisine and culture with my friends here in London too.

Before leaving Barranquilla I hit up the supermarket to stock up on certain Colombian goodies. With a night out in London on the cards, I thought it was the perfect excuse to host a Colombian themed pre-party at mine.

I assessed what ingredients I had to hand (along with what would be available in the UK) and set out making my menu. To drink I chose typical aguardiente (think sambucca but smoother), agua panela cocktails (brown sugar water…in my opinion just made to be mixed with rum) and juice from a fruit called borojo, as I had brought over the pulp.

To eat, I thought of chicken wings and traditional arepas, made with a special corn flour which I bought over from Colombia. These were topped with guacamole and tomato salsa, which also went nicely with the patacones al horno I served (recipe found here). On my local high street I even managed to find yucca, a root vegetable popular in Colombia. The yucca was boiled and served with fromage frais, which I hoped would be some kind of equivalent to the delicious costeño dip suero, which is a bit like sour cream.

Desert in a packet = classy

And of course – dessert was compulsory. The cake from my previous post featured, as did natilla – a traditional Colombian flan, made from panela (dark sugar) which I served with cream and strawberries. This came freshly from the packet, and I felt very retro chic serving flan with whipped cream.

To list all the recipes here would be far too lengthy, but really a lot of them were quite basic. The tomato salsa was simple but classic, from none other than the goddess that is Delia Smith (check out her recipe here).The chicken wings (seen above in the glass bowl) were marinated in a last minute concoction of what I deemed to be a ‘Colombian-inspired’ sauce, and they turned out to be really tasty.

To give them a go, you need:

‘Colombian style’ marinated chicken wings

-2 tbsp cumin seeds, ground
-2 garlic cloves
-Generous drizzling of olive oil
-A spoonful of chilli sauce (depending on how hot you like it)
-A tablespoon of crunchy peanut butter
-A large handful of corriander leaves
-Plently of salt and pepper
-3 tbsp of thick greek yogurt.

All whizzed in a blender, this made a lovely thick marinade for the wings. Coat wings in marinade from anything up to 24 hours before serving (the longer the better really), and then cook at 180 degrees for about 45 minutes.

Soon enough, the food was ready and the feast was served!

My retro flan and passion fruit sponge were accompanied by the very welcome addition of Celebrations – and now I really feel like it’s Christmas. Overall it was a lovely evening spent with wonderful people, catching up and sharing a great variety of food (and drink…).

Here’s to Colombian food reaching London, and catching up with old friends. I intend on bringing back a few British treats to Barranquilla too, but fear the delights of Heinz baked beans may be lost on the Barranquilleros. Still, a girl can always try!

British Baking (with a Barranquillero twist)

19th December 2014 by Eve Bidmead Leave a Comment

Guess who’s come home for Christmas? After bidding a brief farewell to my beloved Barranquilla, I touched back down in London to spend Christmas with my friends and family back here in the UK. One of the many exciting things about being back home is being close to all the little things I love – especially my collection of cookbooks!

I really do love a good cookbook

I spent an evening curled up in bed back with my old friends Nigel Slater, Nigella Lawson and Mary Berry. Having brought back various Colombian food products with me, I could just envision one of Mary Berry’s traditional English cakes with a new Colombian twist to it. And what cake is more traditional than the classic Victoria Sponge? Proving that less is often more, this simple sponge cake with just a touch of jam, cream and fresh berries is a much-loved classic and an iconic British bake. Dare I fiddle with this recipe?

Fiddle I did, and to much success! Replacing the British jam and strawberries with Colombian arequipe (dulce de leche to Argentines, caramel to you and me), a touch of coconut and a passion fruit cream, here is my twist on the traditional English sponge.

Colombian coconut, caramel and passionfruit Victoria Sponge

(Recipe adapted from Mary Berry’s Cookery Course)

Ingredients

For the Cake:
– 225g of butter (at room temperature, plus a bit extra for greasing the tins)
– 225g of caster sugar
– 225g of self-raising flour
– 2 level tsp baking powder
– 4 large eggs

For the Filling:
– 200g Arequipe/Caramel
– 150g cream cheese
– 100g double cream, whipped
– 100g icing sugar
– 2 generous tbsp of desiccated coconut
– Passionfruit pulp from 5 passion fruits

Equipment:
Two victoria Sponge tins
A good whisk!

(Have you noticed anything about the measurements for this cake? Equal amounts of butter, sugar, and flour. Add in 4 eggs and 2 tsp of baking powder and you have the backbone of about 100 delicious sponge-cake recipes. Learn these ingredients, practice this cake, and you have mastered a classic. How easy is that?!).

Method

Line cake tins with cake tin liners or grease with some butter. Preheat oven to gas mark 4/180 degrees/350 Fahrenheit.

1) Cube butter and place in a large bowl. Add in the caster sugar, flour, baking powder and eggs (crack in one at a time).
2) Here you can use a hand or electric whisk to combine ingredients. You want to do this at a slow speed to gain a nice soft mixture which should drop off your whisk when lifted up.
3) Spread cake mix evenly between two tins and pop in your preheated oven for between 20-30 minutes, until cakes are starting to shrink away at the sides and are springy when pressed. Take out and leave to cool. When cooled, the cakes can be removed from tins.
4) Now time for our filling! First get your passionfruit pulp by putting the passion fruit seeds in a small tea colander and press with the back of a spoon to separate the flesh from the seeds. Reserve pulp for later.
5) Get out your arequipe (or caramel – carnation sell a good ready made one), and spread with a smile on top of the base layer of the sponge. If it’s a little tough, a quick blast in the microwave helps its spreadability.
5) To make the icing, whip your double cream until it is thick and spreadable. Then add in cream cheese, your desiccated coconut, icing sugar and passionfruit pulp and mix again to combine.
6) Sandwich the second sponge cake on top, and smooth over a bit more cream. Here your artistic license is at play – warm up and drizzle over some more caramel, dot on a few passion fruit seeds – whatever your heart desires!

A simple sponge cake tropically transformed into a coconut, caramel and passion fruit delight. Serve with a nice cup of English tea, or a shot of aguardiente (a Colombian alcoholic spirit) – that choice I will leave up to you!

Good things come in 3’s…not 1, not 2, but THREE chocolate cakes.

6th August 2014 by Eve Bidmead Leave a Comment

I wanted to do a post about chocolate cake. But then I had a think and decided I could do better than that. What, you may ask, could possibly be better than a chocolate cake? Three chocolate cakes! I present to you the Chocolate Almond Flourless Cake, the Chocolate Raspberry Buttercream cake and last but not least, Nigella Lawson’s Sour Cream Chocolate Cake.

But here’s a confession: chocolate cake just doesn’t really do it for me. By no means am I one of those weird people who just doesn’t like chocolate. So before you get all…

Steady on, because I love chocolate. However, chocolate cake…I just don’t really get it. It’s like chocolate in a poorer format. Mix it with all that flour and butter and I think it loses its sparkle somewhat. Now obviously many chocolate lovers out there would call this slightly blasphemous. So I’m working on my love of chocolate cake. A hard task I know, but someone has to do it.

My work began with the discovery of a Flourless Chocolate Cake, which is cake 1 of 3 today. It uses ground almonds instead of flour and is therefore gluten-free – find a coeliac, and make their day with this cake.

To make this gluten-free cake, you will need:

(Original recipe from BBC Good Food)

– 100g butter, diced, plus extra for greasing
– flour, for dusting
– 140g best-quality dark chocolate, with 70% cocoa solids, broken into pieces
– 6 large eggs, separated
– 140g ground almonds
– 1 tbsp kirsch or Cointreau (optional)
– pinch of salt
– 85g caster sugar

Method

1) Firstly, preheat the oven to 170C/Gas 3/fan oven 150C. Grease a 23cm/9in springform cake tin and line the base with greaseproof paper or baking parchment. Dust the sides with a little flour.

2) Melt chocolate and butter into a heatproof bowl set over a pan of gently simmering water. Heat until melted, then remove the bowl from the pan and stir until smooth. Now leave to cool while you get on whisking the egg whites.

3) Separate eggs. Yolks can be mixed in with ground almonds, while the whites need to be whisked with the sugar until soft peaks form (soft peaks are when the whipped whites are just beginning to become stiff, but will still melt back into shape when moved).

4) Now you want to slowly fold the whisked egg whites into the chocolate, almond and yolk mixture. This is a very important step in order to achieve a light airy cake – don’t just mix the two up, gently add in blobs of the whisked egg whites and fold into the chocolate mix until combined.

5) Pop the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 30-35 minutes until well risen and just firm to the touch. Cool in the tin, and don’t get disheartened if it cracks or shrinks. It’s perfectly normal and will still taste fantastic.

This cake goes down really well as although it’s very rich the ground almonds add a real lightness to it. You can leave it plain or, like I did slice it in half and ice it. A simple ganache of melted chocolate and double cream (equal measures of both) is fantastic, and with a sprinkle of pomegranate seeds it’s almost like one of your five a day.

Now time for the Chocolate cake with Raspberry Icing. Made with real raspberries, it’s a perfect chocolate/berry combo.

For the cake:
– 50g cocoa powder
– 6tbsp boiling water
– 3 large eggs
– 50ml milk
– 175g self-raising flour
– 1tsp baking powder
– 100g soft butter
– 300g caster sugar

For the raspberry icing:
– 100g butter, cubed and at room temperature
– 75g cream cheese
– 150g raspberries
– 250g icing sugar, sieved

The chocolate cake recipe comes from the ever-fabulous Mary Berry. It’s essentially just a chocolate victoria sponge mix and is a great base for a variety of icing and topping options.

Method
1) Heat your oven to 180°C/gas mark 4. Use 2 victoria sponge sandwich cases for this – grease and line bottoms. You then want to measure the cocoa into a bowl, add the boiling water and mix until you form a rich, chocolatey paste.

2) Add the remaining ingredients and mix until well combined – use a whisk and some elbow grease, or use a hand mixer or food processor – far easier. Now to just divide the cake mixture between the prepared tins and bake in the pre-heated oven for about twenty-five to thirty minutes until well risen and shrinking away from the sides of the tin.

3) For your icing, whip out my favorite…good old frozen berries! You can use fresh, but frozen works just as well. Defrost slightly in the microwave, then blend up.

4) Once blended, it’s a little bit annoying but we’ve got to get rid of those pesky pips. So push blended berries through a sieve into a bowl and you should be left with some delicious fresh raspberry puree in the bowl. Now you want to blend this with your butter and cream cheese, along with the sieved icing sugar. This results in a gorgeous pink, thick icing.

5) Ice the top of one cake, then place the other on top and repeat. Decorate with a few extra berries, and your raspberry chocolate cake is done!

By this point, you might start thinking I’m not as reluctant to bake/eat chocolate cake as I initially set out to be. And with the discovery of this third and final cake, I feel sure my feelings towards chocolate cake have changed dramatically for the good. It’s moist, rich, and really everything you’d want a chocolate cake to be. This is a Nigella Lawson recipe taken from her book How to be a Domestic Goddess. Make this cake and you will have more than earned your domestic goddess stripes.

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

For this cake, you will need:
– 200g plain flour
– 200g caster sugar
– 3/4 tsp baking powder
– 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
– 1/2 tsp salt
– 200g soft unsalted butter
– 40g best cocoa
– 150ml sour cream
-2 large eggs
– 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Ingredients for Icing

– 80g milk chocolate
– 80g dark chocolate
– 75g unsalted butter
– 125mL sour cream
– 1 tsp vanilla extract
– 1 tbsp golden syrup
– 300g icing sugar, sieved
– 1/2 tsp hot water

Method
1) Quite a lot of ingredients! But it’s actually a complete doddle to make. All you have to do is mix the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cocoa, butter, eggs, vanilla and sour cream in a food processor or electric mixer and mix until you’ve achieved what looks (and tastes like…mmm) like a good, chocolately cake batter. Divide cake mix between the two tins and bake for about 25-30 minutes. When cake is done it will start to shrink away from the edges of the tins.

2) While that’s baking make the icing. Melt the butter and chocolate in the microwave or over a gentle heat on the stove, combine fully and leave to cool a little. Now stir in the sour cream and vanilla. This is when it all starts to look fantastic.

3) Add in your golden syrup, and sift in the icing sugar and whisk together. My icing was a little runny for my liking, so I popped it into the freezer for 10 minutes which worked well. As for icing the cake, you’ll want to leave it to cool down beforehand, but pretty much…just slap it on! In an attractive manner, of course.

I found some sugar flowers in my cupboard and decorated it with those – perhaps you could use sprinkles too? Or go very retro and dig out those silver icing balls from your birthday parties as a kid.

Three chocolate cakes down, and I’ve not only found a love for chocolate cake but also a whole variety of chocolate cakes for different occasions. Bake your flourless chocolate cake for something a bit posh, as its dense chocolate flavor is ever so sophisticated. The raspberry chocolate sponge is visually stunning and makes a great cake to bring to any party. And make the sour cream cake for when you seek nothing but pure, smooth, chocolatey goodness. Whatever your chocolate craving is, one of this three is sure to soothe it!

A berry, berry good loaf

19th July 2014 by Eve Bidmead Leave a Comment

I always think you can’t go wrong with a loaf cake. Some of the best and most classic of cakes lend themselves brilliantly to this bread-like shaped bar of deliciousness. Lemon drizzle loaf anyone? Slice of banana bread? Perhaps a carrot cake loaf? I’ll take all three.

The great Nigel Slater was not wrong when he said ‘There is something elegant and timeless about a slice of plain cake’, but sometimes you want to mix things up. Starting with a classic lemon drizzle loaf, I wanted something equally as moist and lemony, but perhaps with more fruit, and why not throw in some chocolate while we’re at it…

Low and behold the Lemon Yogurt Poppyseed Loaf, with summer berries and a white chocolate drizzle.

It is a real beauty, and pretty darn simple to make too. I’ve adapted the recipe from Red Magazine’s website and you can see the original here. My version uses more ground almonds and less flour, and more yogurt instead of oil – this is the trick for a really sumptuous moist bake in my opinion. You don’t have to buy expensive fresh berries, and I was very pleased to find some of these hiding in my freezer…

For £2 you get about twice as many berries frozen as you do fresh and after 20 seconds at full whack in the microwave they defrost pretty perfectly (careful though, too long and you end up with berry sauce – a mistake I’ve previously made).

For this loaf of loveliness, you will need:

Lemon Yogurt Poppyseed loaf

Ingredients:

– 150g plain flour
– 2 tsp baking powder
– 90 ground almonds
– 175g caster sugar
– 200ml natural yogurt
– 50ml sunflower oil
– 3 medium eggs
– Zest and juice of 2 lemons
– 25g poppy seeds
– 75g white chocolate
– 150g berries

Method:

1) Mix the flour, almonds, baking powder, caster sugar, poppy seeds and lemon zest in a bowl.

2) Separately, in a large jug (or blender if your lazy like me) combine the yogurt, eggs, oil and lemon juice.

3) Now combine the dry ingredients mixed in your bowl well into the wet mixture in your jug and pour into your loaf tin (which you will have greased already, naturally).

4) Pop this into the oven for 40 minutes at 180 degrees celsius.

5) Once out of the oven, leave out to cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes, then take out of the tin and leave for a further 10 minutes. Now comes the fun bit – berry placing and white chocolate drizzling!

6) Melt your white chocolate in the microwave and then…drizzle away. I like using a small dessert fork as you instantly get three little drizzles going on at once, but a knife does pretty much the same job.

7) After one layer of drizzle, pop on your berries- the melted white chocolate should help them stick. Then, just because it’s so much fun, drizzle again!

And there you have it. A very simple recipe for a stunning cake which is sure to be a hit with everyone…

So much so it hardly lasted a second in my home!