Tag Archives: easy

number 5 chocolate cake

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Me and the word perfection is not usually a word that goes hand in hand.

I don’t usually strive for it, happy enough just to sit with the word content. So why was I trying to perfect a chocolate cake? To be honest I don’t really know. I started the challenge and apparently I would be unrelenting until I perfected the bugger.

Everyone needs a chocolate cake recipe up their sleeves. A go to recipe that was tried and true. Unfailing in its taste and you know it will turn out each time. I didn’t have that recipe. Sure I had made countless chocolate cakes in the past, but none of them were quite what I was after. Not too chocolatey, not too rich, not too dry, not too fancy pancy and not a pain to put together.

Shouldn’t be too hard right?

There are probably a few chocolate cake recipes on the internet, Mr Chocolate helpfully suggested.

Yes. Yes there probably is… but they aren’t the righhhht ones.

So I set forth. The chocolate cake challenge was on.

Cake one, no. Cake two…no. Cake three….still no. Cake four, it’s getting closer. Cake five?

Cake five might just have it. Not being particularly enamored of chocolate cake I did wonder why I was putting myself through this. These unhelpful thoughts were pushed to the side however. I’d come this far, surely that chocolate cake was just around the corner?

Chocolate Cake

150g softened butter

150g brown sugar

2 tsp vanilla

4 beaten eggs

150g sourdough starter/ sour cream*

150g melted chocolate (50%)

60mls espresso coffee (1/4 cup)

225g s/r flour (1 1/2 cups)

cocoa powder (1/3 cup)

2 tbls amaretto

In a mixer, cream butter and sugar until changes colour to a white shade, then add vanilla, eggs, cocoa, melted chocolate, amaretto and sourdough starter/sour cream. Fold through flour.

Bake at 180C for approximately 45 minutes in a greased springform pan or greased and lined square pan (approx 21cm). Or until skewer comes out clean.

Icing

1 tbls softened butter

1 1/2-ish  cups icing sugar

5og melted chocolate

* if you don’t have a sourdough starter, substitute sour cream.

*******

So does Number 5 cake cut it? It’s certainly not a bad cake. The flavours are complex enough to keep me happy with the addition of the amaretto, coffee and the starter. It’s moist. It’s chocolatey, without being intense and it was easy to put together.

So will chocolate cake and I ever become firm friends?

It’s quite doubtful. but I’ll make it to keep the rest of the family happy, and they are certainly happy enough with Number 5 Chocolate Cake.

puddings and puddles

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The sun sets early now, when there is a sun that is.

It’s been cold, wet and grey here lately. The days have the stamp of winter on it.

Looped scarfs. wet puddles to jump in, bare trees and mornings starting with wailing black cockatoos overhead.

This is our winter. Not a winter with snow, and sub zero temperatures but a Sydney winter non the less. A winter that calls for heartier food. Slow cooked soups, polenta dishes and perhaps the odd pudding or two.

Sticky Date Pudding

125g softened butter

80g brown sugar*

2 beaten eggs

1 tsp cinnamon

zest of an orange

300g self raising flour

220g dates (I used medjool dates)

1 tsp bicarbonate soda

125mls boiling water

Take any seeds out of the dates and split the dates in half. Pop them in a bowl, add the bicarb and boiling water, set aside.

Cream butter and brown sugar together. Add beaten eggs, orange zest, and cinnamon mix well. Then add date mixture and fold through the flour.

I baked these in individual size cake pans for approximately 25 minutes at 180C. You can easily bake it as a whole cake, and adjust cooking time to suit.

* you could add more sugar if you like your whole pudding experience to be on the sweeter side. I think there is enough sweetness in the sauce though.

Sauce

300mls cream

110g dark muscavado sugar

100g butter

Bring cream to a simmer, add sugar and butter. Stir continuously until butter has melted, (and don’t let it boil over!)

Now with all that pudding energy…best go find some puddles to jump in.

apple and oat muffin season

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Slack jawed, and with my elbow cast at an odd angle, my eyelids creaked open. It seemed I had fallen asleep. These things happen sometimes. It’s  called the sneaky nap. Not a nap that you sneak in, more a nap that sneaks up on you.

There you are going about your business, and then suddenly… whooshka! You wake up slack jawed and no feeling in your arm. The sneaky nap as struck again.

Bleary eyed I staggered out to the lounge room only to find things were looking a little different. Very different. I couldn’t put my finger on it. The Monkeys were quiet and going about their monkey business, surprisingly not causing havoc at that particular moment. So it wasn’t them.

I continued looking about. Things looked clearer, clearer than they had for quite some time. I didn’t think I had napped for that long, so it can’t have been clarity of thought that had returned. I squinted… then it dawned on me, that was it. The fact that I was squinting. Squinting in my lounge room. Squinting in the afternoon autumnal sunlight. At that same moment Mr Chocolate cheerily walked in with a wad of newspaper in hand, and proceeded back to the windows. The light was different…

That was it. The windows were clean!

To celebrate the soft autumn light, and to use up some seasonal apples, Apple Oat Muffins it was.

Apple and Oat Muffins

150g softened butter

3/4 cup raw sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup of whole oats

1 1/2 cups self raising flour

2 beaten eggs

3 grated apples *

Cream butter and sugar together. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Spoon mixture into lined muffin tray. Sprinkle with a little extra raw sugar. Bake at 190C for approximately 25 minutes.

*Apple season runs from January to May.

experimenting- sometimes it pays off and sometimes…

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Sometimes my experimenting in the kitchen pays off, sometimes…not quite so much.

Take it from me, mashed wasabi potatoes with purple carrots doesn’t work. It should have, but it didn’t. It really, really didn’t work.

I should have taken a picture of the gluey mess that this dish was. Just for the comedic value of how badly  it lay on our plates. I’m not sure what was the clincher, but it was like eating funny tasting soupy playdough. (With out the fun of having played with it before hand.)

The Monkeys refused to go near it, purple wasn’t for them. Mr Chocolate bravely tried to plod through it until I told it was ok, he really didn’t have to be so brave.  I also gave up after the multiple sips of water in between, just trying to get the sucker down.

So no, I won’t be trying that one again, (and perhaps I shouldn’t have been experimenting on Mr Chocolate’s birthday.)

Lucky for me (and lucky for everyone else involved) these scrolls I have also been experimenting with lately didn’t have the same effect as the purple wasabi playdough.

Pesto Parmesan Scrolls

150g starter

1 tsp yeast

60mls tepid water

100g melted butter

125mls milk

1 1/4 salt

3 cups flour (450g)

pesto

parmesan

Add starter, yeast and water-  together. Whisk and leave for an hour or so. Mix remaining ingredients together and then knead for 5 minutes on a lightly floured surface or until well incorporated and dough is smooth. Leave to prove for a couple of hours. Roll out to a rectangle. Spoon pesto on, grate some parmesan. Roll up dough, slice into portions. Place on a lined tray, allow to prove for another hour or so. Bake at 190 for 20-25 minutes.

autumn

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a changed beat

different air

cool nights and sunny days

autumn is here

along with school holidays

long walks in the park

the crackle of brown leaves under foot

perfect to build up and then run through

changing colours, changing light

changing rhythms

long days and aimless running

 need lots of snacks

healthy ones

Tahini Balls

1 cup whole oats

1 cup desiccated coconut

1/3 cup unhulled tahini

1/3 cup honey

1/3 cup hazelnut meal

1 tsp vanilla

sesame seeds

Mix it all together, add a couple of tablespoons of water just to bind it. Roll into balls with dampened hands,  then roll in raw sesame seeds. Keep in the fridge.


biscuits, cookies and things to nibble

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I hadn’t realised I had baked quite so many biscuits over bloggin’ time…

Custard Biscuits

Gingerbread Men

Anzac Biscuits

Lemon Vanilla Stars

Coconut Jam Drops

Everyday Chocolate Mint Biscuits

honey biscuits

Chewy Coconut Biscuits

speculaas

Chocolate Honey Biscuits

Parmesan Crackers

super easy chocolate chip biscuits

Passionfruit Shortbread

Kettles boiled… anyone want to join me for afternoon tea?

Tea or Coffee?

Fetta Pumpkin sausage rolls

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Fetta Pumpkin sausage rolls. They weren’t shifting out of my head until I made them. A few pumpkins came and went, fetta went into other dishes, and then finally the planets had aligned and voila… there was fetta and pumpkin in the fridge at the same time.

Time to get roasting.

There aren’t too many ingredients in here, so the key to getting it to taste great, is using great ingredients. A very sweet, seasonal pumpkin, some tasty Greek fetta, local whole garlic cloves and pastry.

It’s not often you’ll find packaged pastry in my recipes. I hadn’t had any in my freezer for a really long time. So long in fact that, the pastry and I just sort sat there, eyeing each other off for awhile. In the end though, pastry won. I wasn’t about to expand my culinary skills on making puff pastry just yet, (give me another 15 years perhaps) and a shorter crust pastry just wasn’t going to cut it for this one. So I slit the plastic, and funnily enough the world didn’t end.

Fetta Pumpkin Sausage Rolls

pumpkin

garlic

fetta

salt and pepper

olive oil

puff pastry

Cut your pumpkin into wedges and lay on a tray

add a couple of whole cloves of garlic

drizzle with olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

roast until soft and smelling delicious

All into a bowl, and mash with a fork, cool

add crumbled fetta, stir through.

Spoon mixture into middle of pastry sheet, and roll up

cut into sizes you want, bake on tray at 200C

until golden and smells delicious

a roast tomato tart… or four

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I could have eaten four of these

I didn’t… but I could have

Oh, I so could have…

*****

Pastry

200gms butter

2 cups plain flour (300gms)

110gms natural yogurt

1 tsp vinegar

In a food processor pulse flour and butter until resembles bread crumbs. Tip out into a bowl and add yogurt and vinegar. Mix through, a quick knead until a smooth consistency and then pop into the fridge for awhile. Take out and roll to the thickness you want. I did individual tarts, but it could easily be done as one big one.

Tart

A layer of sliced fresh mozzarella

A couple of strips of free range bacon

Roasted tomatoes

Into the oven at 200C until the pastry is golden.

Sunday musings and banana crumble muffins

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There is nothing quite as enjoyable as some long weekend musings over a deep cup of coffee, and a muffin or two. Mr Chocolate even indulged me by having a decaf coffee with me, while pretending it was the real deal.

Once we had world politics sorted, discussed the plight of Australian farmers versus big corporations, the annoying-ness of facebook, a spot of fracking thrown in and what we should have for dinner. My mind was let loose on to other matters.

Olive tree in a pot. They look good, but can I make it work given my minimal sun, teeny tiny space and very pale green thumb? It wouldn’t be for ever, but could I keep it happy until we found sunnier pastures down the track?

When does a night time snack turn into an early breakfast?… Just how early can breakfast be?

Tattoos, could you, would you, should you? Is it a pregnancy induced want of mine? I think I’m keen… but then again, maybe it will pass?

Talking birth is a bit like talking religion or politics. Everyone has an opinion and things can get rather heated… aren’t people funny?

How about you? Been musing on anything lately?

******

As for the muffins to go with your musings, I saw these delectable little goodies- Cranberry and Crumb Top Muffins, and I wanted to play. Actually most of the things Greg and Katherine make, I want to have a crack at. But the muffins were calling, not in a cranberry kind a way, but in a banana kind a way. Actually the bananas had developed quite a tone on them, noisy buggers. Help, my skin is turning brown, and I really need a focus! Cook with me!

Who am I to ignore a helpless banana on a bench, Banana Crumble Muffins they were to be, (and just quietly… they were kind of  delicious.)

Banana Crumble Muffins

125g softened butter

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp cardamom

2 tbls honey

1 beaten egg

3 mashed bananas

2 cups self raising flour (300g)

Mix all ingredients together except flour, then fold that through too. Spoon mixture into lined muffin tray.

Crumble Topping

2 tbsp melted butter

2 tbsp dark muscavado sugar (or regular brown sugar)

2 tbsp plain flour

Mix together and spoon mixture 1/2 tsp at a time over muffins.

Bake at 180C for approximately 30 minutes or until light golden.

capsicum sweet chilli sauce

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I wanted to make this chilli sauce, but then realised I didn’t have enough vinegar, and also wanted to use up the eight long capsicums I had, (bull horn’s.) So I fiddled a bit, a little tweak, a whispered please let it work and hey presto… capsicum chilli sauce. I think I actually like this one even more than the other as it’s a little less sweet, leaves the taste of the capsicums and still gives a dish the kick I want it to.

Capsicum Chilli Sauce

8 long thin capsicums

100g small hot chillis

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups white vinegar

5 cloves garlic

2 tsp salt

black pepper

2 good slurps of balsamic vinegar

In a food processor, blitz the capsicum, chilli, garlic and ginger. In a pot add add the remaining ingredients, add chilli combination and bring to a rolling boil. Keep at the same temperature, stirring until sauce thickens. Poor in to sterilised glass jars/ bottles or in to a clean jar and store in the fridge.

chocolate immunity

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Mr Chocolate always said that he had chocolate immunity.

That is, he can eat a vast quantity and have no ill effects from it. No effect what so ever. Having been on quite a few long car journeys where I’ve been the chocolate supplier to the never-ending opening mouth. Yes, I think I could vouch for the fact he can put quite a lot away and still having nothing to show for it.

Not me though, if I have too much I know about it. Heart rate goes up, tongue goes a little odd. One square too many? Yes, I think so.

Not Mr Chocolate though. Dark, milk, white, they’re all there. The household is a sad and sorry one if it looks like we are down to our last 100 grams. The man likes to have options and he also likes to dip in to those options on a regular basis.

With that in mind, dipping into those options he did. Right before a chiropractor appointment. Thinking nothing of the couple of hundred grams of goodness he had just consumed before going in. He was a little startled to find the chiropractor finding a new point in his head that showed a spike in high blood sugar levels.

Were you drinking last night? she questioned…

Pffft, no way.

Have you had something quite sweet recently?

Uh ohh…

Perhaps a little chocolate this morning?

Busted. Chocolate immunity no more. It clearly was coming up on a point on his head and was there for all to see. Well for all canny chiropractors known for using corresponding cranial points anyway. His pancreas was clearly waving the red flag of, “I’ve just consumed rather a lot of good quality chocolate in order to get through the working day.”

Lesson learnt anyway. Mr Chocolate now knows, it’s a much better idea to eat that block and a half AFTER his next chiropractor appointment. That way chocolate immunity remains intact.

Everyday Chocolate Mint Biscuits

175g softened butter

110g (1/2 cup) caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp peppermint essence

300g (2 cups) plain flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

Cream butter and sugar in a mixer until pale and fluffy. Mix in, vanilla and peppermint, then add remaining flour and cocoa.

Quick knead and roll dough between two sheets of baking paper, approximately 5mm thick and refrigerate until dough is firm.

Cut into shapes and bake at 180C for approximately 20 minutes.