Easy Chocolate Nemesis revisited

Yesterday we were invited to our friends' new holiday house at Cowes for lunch. It was my turn to take dessert, and as it was my lovely friend Pauline's birthday last week I thought I'd take some sort of cake. I decided on River Cafe's Easy Chocolate Nemesis again . Since making it then I've bought the book that features it - River Cafe Pocket Books: Puddings, Cakes and Icecreams, so here's the dead easy recipe in its original form...

Easy Chocolate Nemesis

340g 70% chocolate, broken into pieces

225g unsalted butter

5 eggs

210g caster sugar divided into 2 lots (70g + 120g)

Preheat oven to 120C. Butter a 25cm round cake tin (not springform) and line the bottom with a circle of buttered baking paper.

Melt the chocolate with the butter in a bowl set over simmering water. Do not let the water touch the bowl. While it's melting, heat 120g of the sugar with 100ml of water in a small pan and let it boil for a minute or so until it forms a light syrup. Pour the hot syrup into the melted chocolate and cool slightly.

While it's cooling beat the eggs with the remaining 70g of sugar until quadrupled in volume. Add the chocolate to the eggs and beat slowly until combined. Pour into the prepared tin. Put a folded teatowel in the bottom of a deep baking tray and enough hot water to come 3/4 of the way up the tin. Bake for 50 minutes* or until set. Leave the cake to cool in the water before refrigerating.

Bring to room temperature before serving. I sprinkled the cake with rose flavoured Persian fairy floss and a few rose petals, and served with a dollop of thick cream, to which I'd added a few drops of rose water. To serve, slice with a hot knife wiped clean between each cut.

* I don't have a 25 cm tin or a baking dish big enough to hold one, so I used a 23cm one. My new oven is so much quicker than any I've ever used so the smaller cake took the same time as the bigger one in the recipe despite being deeper. Another oven may take a bit longer...note that the recipe I referred to in the original post says bake a 23cm cake for an hour and a half.


Happy birthday Pauline!

nigella's chocolate marsala cake

I made this for dessert last night. It was a delicious change from all the low/no fat, no sugar cake I've been baking lately, and was a cinch to make. It's from How to be a domestic goddess and this is how it appears in the book , with my note at the end.

Chocolate Marsala Cake

100g unsalted butter

100g dark chocolate, broken up

4 large eggs

175g caster sugar

50g self-raising flour, sifted 3 times

3 tablespoons Marsala

for the Icing:

100g dark chocolate

1 tablespoon Marsala

100ml double cream*

22cm Springform tin, greased and lined.

Preheat the oven to 180C / Gas Mark 4.
Melt the butter and chocolate together in the microwave or a double boiler, and then set aside to cool slightly. Beat the eggs and sugar together until thick, pale and moussy, and greatly increased in volume; it should double, triple even. Gently fold the sifted flour into the egg mixture, trying not to lose all of the air. Now fold the butter and chocolate very carefully into the cake mixture. Pour into the tin and cook for 35 minutes, by which time the top should be firm and the cake underneath dense and desirably damp.
Cool in a rack for 5 minutes, and then pour over the Marsala. I find it easier to do this by the teaspoonful so that the liquid is evenly distributed. Leave the cake to cool completely before releasing it from it’s tin.
So, the icing: melt the chocolate, Marsala and cream in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over a gentle heat. Take it off the heat, and whisk until it reaches a good icing consistency; smooth, thick, but not solid. I like to spread this just on the very top of the cake, which anyway sinks on cooling so that you have a roughly circular sunken pond to fill, leaving an outline of cooked-cake rim. When set, you're left, beautifully, with a Sacher-shiny disc of ganache suspened on top of this dusty-brown, matt cake.

*Note: I had a bottle of thickened cream in the fridge and foolishly used it instead of double (pure) cream. Eeew - the result was an oily, curdled mess, which I had to throw away and remake with the correct cream. A waste of 100g of good Callebaut chocolate.

livestrong day 2008

Here's my entry for Barbara from Winosandfoodies A taste of yellow . I've been wanting an excuse to make Belinda Jeffery's Luscious lemon slice from her mix & bake cookbook for ages. As I'm off to a fashion parade tonight and have to take something for supper, here is my chance to do both. Barbara's event is in support of Livestrong Day - the Lance Armstrong Foundation's one-day initiative to raise awareness and funds for the cancer fight, which this year is on Tuesday, May 13. As I'm entering at the last minute my wrist band isn't in the photos but hopefully it'll arrive soon and I'll be wearing it on the day.

Belinda Jeffrey's Luscious Lemon Slice

Base:

1 1/2 cups (225g) plain flour

1/2 cup (80g)icing sugar

finely grated zest of a lemon

180g cold unsalted butter, cubed

2 tspns iced water

Topping:

6 eggs

3 cups (660g) caster sugar

finely grated zest of 3 lemons

1 cup (250ml) lemon juice * (about 5-6 lemons)

1/2 cup (75g) plain flour

icing sugar to serve

opt. chopped pistachios/blueberries/raspberries to serve

Preheat oven to 180C. Lightly butter a 32x24x5 baking dish. Place flour, icing sugar and lemon zest in a food processor and whiz them together. Ad the butter and process until mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add iced water and process until mixture forms a ball around the blade. Press into prepared tin and roll a jar across the top to smooth it out. Bake for about 18 mins or until starting to colour. Place on a wire rack for 5 mins. to cool and reduce oven to 150C.

Meanwhile, make the topping. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar with a balloon whisk until well combined, whisk in lemon juice and zest. Sift flour over the top and whisk until mixture is smooth. Pour over the slightly cooled base and bake for a further 35-40 mins or until topping is set. Cool in tin on wire rack. When completely cold, slice with a sharp knife. Before serving, dust with icing sugar. Sprinkle on a few chopped pistachios, or, if serving as a dessert, pile a few berries on top and serve with a dollop of cream on the side.

*If you microwave lemons on medium heat for a couple of minutes until hot (but not too hot to hold) they will yield double the amount of juice.

The slice is tangy and delcious but quite delicate...not really ideal as finger food but would be perfect as a dessert.

tv cake 2

Just watched Patrice Newell on morning tv talking about her olive oil book.

What a great close-up of my cake...

and they seemed to like it ok!

tv cake

Penguin Group has just published Tree to Table : cooking with Australian olive oil by Patrice Newell, which features a collection of olive oil recipes by twenty Australian chefs and cooks. Patrice is going to be on morning tv tomorrow to publicise her book, and her brave publicist (who is a friend of Georgie's) asked me to make this cake to take with them. The recipe is by Philip Johnson - owner and chef of e'cco bistro in Brisbane.

There were a couple of worrying moments during the preparation but it all came together in the end. Here's the recipe :

Philip Johnson's Lemon & Olive Oil Cake

3 egg yolks
550g caster sugar
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 cups milk
grated rind 2 lemons
juice 3 lemons
300g SR flour
1/2 t bicarb soda
pinch salt
5 egg whites
icing sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 170 C. Grease a 26cm springform tin and line with baking paper.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat egg yolks and sugar until thick and pale. (I was a bit worried here. No amount of beating was ever going to turn this much sugar and 3 yolks into anything that could be described as thick and pale. It was just dry and crumbly. I pushed on regardless.)

Whisk in oil, milk, lemon juice and rind, mixing well to combine.

Sift together the dry ingredients. In a clean bowl, whisk egg whites until soft peaks form. Fold flour mixture into egg yolks and sugar mixture, then fold in beaten egg whites. (Now the mixture looked like scrambled egg. I mixed it for a few seconds with the electric mixture and thank heavens it smoothed out.)

Pour mixture into prepared tin. Bake for 1 1/4 hours or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Dust cake with icing sugar if using, and serve with creme fraiche or whipped cream. It's also great served with fruit - for example, oranges poached in caramel.

Serves 10 - 12

I realised I was not going to be able to taste the result so cunningly made 2 small cupcakes to test.

The cake tastes great, very moist - almost like a steamed pudding in texture, and with a lovely flavour. Now I just have to decide whether to dust the top (top photo - nicely browned but a bit cracked) or the bottom (photo below - not as evenly coloured and a bit damp-ish) with the icing sugar.