paid my dues

The girls came, and helped me a lot. They were nice, asking a lot of questions but still they were heroines, no complaints, no talking back, no drama just did their job. So...in return I promised them that I will pay my dues in cake.
And I did and actually they were very happy with it.
They were promise a chocolate ganache cake with blackberries and they were not complaining... I think everyone was green with envy but never mind, the girls did the job, they earned the cake.

The original recipe idea came from Lila Füge, a very much liked Hungarian celebrity blogger wannabe (ok, ok I take it back), whose style I don't really like but whose blog I still read sometimes ;).


Chocolate ganache cake with blackberries
180 g flour
1 pinch of salt
40g cocoa powder
20g corn starch
250 g sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1.5 tsp bicarb
175g natural yoghurt (or a bit less)
1,5 dl water
1,5 dl oil
2 eggs

for the ganache:
300 g dark chocolate
a pinch of cayenne pepper (you can omit)
300 ml thick double cream
3-4 tbs blackberry jam (or whatever you like)
fresh (or frozen but I don't want to know about it) blackberry to decorate

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Butter and line your cake tin(s). If you have two tins, then you are lucky. I was working with one so it took more time to get ready with the sponge cakes.

Sieve the dry ingredients into a big bowl and add the wet ingredients one by one. Stir with a spatula, you don't need a hand mixer or any voodoo kitchen gadget for this cake. Pour the cake mixture into the tin(s) and bake in the oven for 30 minutes. If you find it undone in the middle (you know cake test with a needle) but actually the top is turning dark brown, then put it back in the oven for an extra 5-10 minutes but cover with tinfoil to prevent burning.
While the cakes are being made in the oven, heat up the double cream on your stove, add some fresh vanilla (or extract) and/or some cayenne and pour the hot cream over the chocolate (you can use good quality dark chocolate drops/pastilles as well) and let it rest/melt for 2 minutes. Once molten, stir carefully, and put aside 200 ml from the ganache. Put the ganache in the fridge for an hour, and in the meantime your cake can cool enough to handle. If the cake is not in level, then trim the excess to get two nice thick disks. Put a layer of blackberry jam on the top of one of the cakes, spread carefully and pour that 200 ml, cooled ganache on the top. Spread the ganache but make sure that you leave 0,5 mm at the edges. Put the second sponge on the top, and press down carefully so that you even out the filling.
Pour rest of the ganache over the cake, and decorate to your preference. Put the blackberries on the top of the ganache to remind yourself that it is actually it is a chocolate AND blackberry cake!

lemon drizzle cake

So easy, and quick that it takes longer to write down the recipe than to make the cake.
Since I am pursuing the xylitol fad recently, it is made with that. Otherwise, there is nothing special in it. 

lemon drizzle sunshine

Lemon drizzle cake: 
200g natural Greek yoghurt
150g xylitol
2 eggs
juice and zest of one lemon
grated ginger up to your own taste (optional)
1 tsp vanilla escence
225 g sifted flour
1 pinch of baking soda
1 tsp of baking powder
100ml oil (rapeseed, or sunflower)

50g xylitol
juice of one lemon

Mix the wet ingredients in one bowl, add the oil gradually. Sift in the flour and the baking power.
Use a rectangular, or a plain loaf tin (which was buttered and floured beforehand) and bake the mixture in the oven (preheated to 180°C) for 45-50 mins (might take a hour). If burns quickly, then put tinfoil on the top to prevent burning.
While it's in the oven warm up the xylitol with the lemon juice in a pan until the sweetener dissolves, then a pour over the hot cake when taken out of the oven. Wait till it cools to room temperature and take out of the tin. Consume! :)

Kitchen Recycling 2012/January

Since it is a new year (and btw Happy New Year to all my readers!) we have the choice of making some new years resolutions.Something like I will learn, I will give-up, I will do this, I won't do that, I will enroll and finish you name it and then we all forget about these within a week or so...or sometimes life gives you no choice but you have to change your habits without any consideration and stick to that for a while (or a lifetime:)). Either way it is, I think that for 2012 a lot of people will make the resolution of saving, or not wasting (money, food, time, attention etc.) so why not starting that in your kitchen?

This is not a new invention, as women, having practice in cooking, know the tricks of "recycling" of food for hundreds of years. For example, we have the Italian Panzanella, the Hungarian Hortobágyi Palacsinta, the Cesar Salad,Spanish croquettes, the lovely Bread and Butty Pud that all British housewives know the best, and we could continue the list with a loads of other dishes that is created by creative chefs, wives, students in order to save the leftover.

A couple of years ago the BBC went as far as creating an entire series around the topic and filmed the TV program, the Economy Gastronomy, which was a successful attempt to make viewers realize how much food (and consequently money) goes into waste and what you can do with your leftover Sunday Roast besides chucking that into the bin.

I could also mention the great initiative of lovefoodhatewaste.com, which is trying to encourage us to get the most from every ingredient and giving us colourful ideas of serving up the leftover that would go into waste.

In the light of these said above I would like to give you some recipes this month that uses up some leftover from your fridge and helps you to clean out your cupboard, giving everyday food a bit of a twist but on a low budget.

The first recipe this month is a DIY chocolate rocky road, for which I got the inspiration from Nigella. She showed how to use up the remains of the Christmas Cake, turning it into posh (no offense but what else?) chocolate truffles and serving them like they have always meant to be posh chocolate truffles:)!
Since, I was not in the mood of faffing around with the truffles, I turned this recipe into (not a classical) Rocky Road, adding whatever I found in the kitchen.
If you want to have some fun in the kitchen, then be my guest and start making the little truffle balls. If you are lazy like myself, then follow me :)
The rules and the ingredients are really not strict here. I was trying to give you some idea where to start and the variation of the ingredients is up to your taste and (of course) purse.


DIY Chocolate Rocky Road:
Ingredients:
1/3 of a traditional fruit and nut Christmas Cake (or the third of a 23 cm sponge cake or cca. 200g biscuits)
200g of Dark chocolate (any type)
200ml double cream
cca. 50g butter (if I say a knob of butter would you know what I am talking about)
cca. 2-3 tbs hazelnut cream and the same amount of peanut butter
a handful of raisin, chopped walnut and coconut (or almond, pecan, Brazil nut etc)
a dash of vanilla extract
cca. 1 dl sweet champagne (port,sherry or any sweet wine or any liqueur from the bottom of the bottle)*

Melt the chocolate over water bath, add the butter and the cream and take off the heat when molten. Let it cool.
Crumb the cake (the drier, the better) into a big bowl and pour in some champagne and add some vanilla extract. Stir in the nuts, any dried fruit of your choice, the melted chocolate and add the hazelnut cream and the peanut butter.
Turn the mixture into a cake tin, let it rest in the fridge for 2-3 hours or overnight and serve it sliced.

*FYI: Nigella used Pedro Ximénez :) but if you are serving this to children use some fruit juice or squash

it was difficult to take a good shot of this

sticky toffee Christmas Cake

I was making efforts to do the Christmas menu list in advance because I know that I will not have time before the vacation to do that so. Simply, because I am working up till Christmas Eve.
So, I was going through my files and found this old recipe that I downloaded in August (!) 2010 (it's never early enough to start thinking of your Xmas menu, is it?!). The recipe seemed quick and easy and in my household that gives thumbs-up to a cake! The cake requires no steaming, chopping, feeding, watering whatsoever so as an experiment I made it tonight and if gets the approval (hm, hm...) from Phil then it is going to be part of our Christmas Menu this year!

fluffy and heavenly

Ingerdients:

for the cake
200g dates (pitted)
100g desiccated coconut (or chopped walnut, almond you name it)
1 carrot (grated)
1 juice of a big orange (or 4 tbs brandy)
2 tbs honey
1,5 tsp allspice
100g butter
140g sugar
2eggs
170g flour
1 tsp bicarb

for the toffee sauce
175g caster sugar
100g butter
6 tbs double cream
25g almond flakes

For the cake, chop the dates, grate the carrot and squeeze the orange juice. For the dry ingredients, measure out the flour,the coconut, the bicarb and the allspice and set aside. For the wet ingredients add the honey to the orange juice, dissolve. Then beat the eggs with the sugar, add the melted butter and emulsify (woo, it sounds very scientific!). Add the dry ingredients, the honey, the dates and the carrots to the mixture and stir carefully.
Pour the cake mixture into a buttered and papered 18cm cake tin, and bake on 160°C preheated oven for 80-90 minutes. When ready, check with a toothpick whether it's baked.
For the toffee, make caramel out of the sugar (no need to stir it, just leave it to caramelize in the pan) and add the almond flakes. When covered in caramel then fish it out and set aside and let it dry. Into the pan add the butter and the double cream to the left-over caramel. Cook till gets saucy and serve with the cake, along with the almond flakes.