Few things make me happier than being asked to bring dessert for a party or gathering.  It’s an opportunity to pull armfuls of cookbooks off the shelf (and we all know how much I love my cookbooks, right?)  I pore over them, meeting recipes that I have somehow missed on my first read-through and re-discovering old friends.

The recipe I settled upon for last week’s Murder Mystery evening as hosted by my friend Sam, was an old lust of mine.  In the new and especially exciting days of food blogging, when everyone knew each other and Google Reader hadn’t been invented yet, my friend Alberto of Il Forno (now very, very sadly defunct) baked Pierre Herme’s Nutella Tart from Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme, of course, with stunning results.  I’d had the cookbook for a few months and had been particularly pleased with the chocolate macarons, but hadn’t found an occasion to make the sexy Nutella Tart.  An evening in with a juicy murder to solve and a crowd of girlies seemed just right to try the tart for the first time.

Tart-making is probably easier if you’re (a) not in a rush and (b) not beleagured with a small child loudly demanding pudding when they haven’t eaten any of their dinner.  I opted not to make Pierre’s sweet tart dough recipe as he insisted on making a very large batch so as not to overwork the dough.  Of course you could freeze the excess for a month.  A month?  I make one or two tarts a year these days!!  So, I just bought a pack of excellent sweet pastry from the supermarket.

While your tart crust bakes, multi-task!  Use this time to toast the hazelnuts, cool ‘em, and then chop them in half.  Then flip your board over and industriously chop your chocolate finely.  Stick the butter in a separate bowl and fiddle around with some eggs.  Once that’s done, put your feet up. (If you’re lucky!)

There’s a bit of waiting around involved once the crust is fully baked.  The Nutella needs to be slathered on, but you can’t do that while the crust is hot!  And you can’t make the ganache until the Nutella is in place.  It’s a bit This Is The House That Jack Built, really.

I found the ganache to be quite difficult.  I suspect that my chocolate siezed as I ended up with a thick, plasticy mass in the bowl which only improved very slightly as I gently drizzled and stirred butter into it.  Seriously, it looked truly awful.  I poured it into the crust anyway and as I scattered hazelnuts artistically, I reflected that it wouldn’t take long to detour to Sainsburys if it all went pear-shaped.  Eleven minutes later, I opened the oven door and was greeted by a tart that looked like the picture in the book!  I love my wonky oven—it really saves the day sometimes!

While I transormed myself into the seductive Fleur Tashious, famous humanitarian actress, the tart cooled to room temperature.  There was just time for an artistic drizzle of Nutella zig-zagged over the whole thing before I had to dash.

Pierre’s Nutella Tart was a big hit.  A really, really big hit, in fact.  I served it with some extra-thick brandy cream which went beautifully with the chocolate and hazelnut decadence of the tart.  And while it was amazing at room temperature, I think I actually liked it better chilled the next morning…

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When Ivonne and Lis first asked me to host August’s Daring Bakers’ challenge, I was thrilled. Then intimidated.  And then the fun megalomania kicked in.   I could choose anything!  I could be as nice or as evil as I wanted to be!  Bwahahahaha!

Ahem.

I’ve always had a long list of things that I’ve wanted to bake.  Well, things I want to eat, really—so this seemed the perfect time to knock something off that list.  But choosing something that would be appropriate for the Daring Bakers turned out to be harder than I expected.  I was quite gung-ho about strudel, but then the next challenge turned out to be strudel!  And then I thought of making a Fraisier but that particular cake cannot be chilled because of the marzipan on top.  Same problem with the amazing Triumph of Gluttony from Sicily!   I was beginning to run out of ideas—crocquembouche? No, we’d already done eclairs and general fun with choux last year—when I came across a beautifully layered cake with stripes that a zebra would be proud of.  The Dobos Torta.

Whisper-thin layers of sponge, a decadent chocolate buttercream and crisp wedges of caramel on top… this was my kind of cake!  And best of all, it fit with all the very sensible criteria for a Daring Bakers recipe, as well as being daring and thoroughly challenging.

Once I’d settled on what I wanted to make, and quickly checked with Ivonne that no one else was planning to challenge us with it, I started thinking about a co-host.  Very little thought was needed before I asked the lovely Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella if she would like to join me.  Thankfully she said yes, and the rest is (now) history.

I have loved looking at all the wonderful Dobos Torta that the very Daring Bakers have created through August.  Looking at cake upon cake while dieting probably isn’t the best idea, but it’s just been so much fun to see so many different shapes, colours and designs.  I feel like a proud mama when I see another new work of culinary art appear on the DB Forum and I am so, so pleased that everyone has taken on this cake with such gusto.  I really think that The Daring Bakers have outdone themselves this month!  Bravo to you all!

The full recipe is below, and please check out all the amazing Dobos Torta via the Daring Bakers’ blogroll.

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Lucas loves to bake.  He has a little playhouse in our garden which started life as his pretend treehouse and has now turned into his bakery.  Whenever we’re outdoors playing he disappears in there to “bake”.  Oh, what delights we’ve had!  He made me some gingerbread men the other day, but what he likes pretend baking most of all are cupcakes.  Perhaps because he loves eating cupcakes the most?

So yesterday, when he was clamouring to make a cake, I thought that he wanted to play in the garden.  But no, it turned out that he wanted to bake a cake for Daddy.  Daddy neeeeeeeds cake! To be fair, Daddy probably did need lots of cake after a survival stag weekend in Wales.  (I was very relieved that he survived the zombie apocalypse and the torrential rain.  But completely missed the earthquake.)

And what sort of cake did Daddy need? Chocolate cake, of course!  So, knowing that (a) this would be messy no matter what, and (b) that Lucas gets bored very quickly, I opted for a one-bowl Devil’s Food cake.

I’d love to say that Lucas is some sort of genius toddler who can weigh our his own ingredients and tidy up after himself, but alas… Mummy played commis chef for the morning.  Anyone else find that their toddlers are tyrants in the kitchen?

Mummy! You did that wrong!
No, mummy! Put it there!
Lucas can do it! *grabs sieve*

So, Lucas climbed up on a chair and whisked.  Then he whisked some more and said it was very hard, so we finished that together.  Then he grabbed the sieve and sieved in the dry mixture, stirring it through the sieve which, joyfully, is far less messy than shaking the sieve!   Plus, it makes a funny noise so that was fun.  And then he whisked again and said, “oh! Where did the chocolate come from?” and looked at me so suspiciously that I laughed and laughed.  And then he looked so offended… and I laughed some more.

I wish I had more pictures but between trying not to cover the kitchen in batter, making sure he didn’t fall off the chair—he decided to have a dance on the chair half-way through—and just plain having fun, I only got a couple.

Unsurprisingly, Lucas vanished when it was time to clean up.  He did do a very good job of licking the bowl and spatula clean, which is surely the best part of making a cake!

After lots of wrangling about what sort of filling Daddy’s cake should have, he settled on chocolate buttercream.  (First of all he said that Daddy couldn’t have chocolate, then he wanted to put a lion inside, and then he wanted buttercream.  “What flavour,” I asked.  Tomato.)

One Real Chocolate buttercream later, Lucas was back on his chair, armed with a spatula and lots of enthusiasm.

For Instant Enthusiasm: Just Add Chocolate.

All I did was dollop the buttercream on and let him do the spreading out.  So, it doesn’t quite reach the edges but you do get a lovely thick mass of it in the middle which is lush.  The pretty topping is all Lucas, too.  He wanted sweeties on Daddy’s cake and since that was a much better idea than tomatoes, I was quite happy to open up some of his Easter sweeties (shhh!) and let him go to town!

So, there you have it.  Lucas baked a cake!  (And Mummy cleaned the kitchen.)

Daddy was very pleased with his “I missed you / welcome home / Lucas wanted chocolate cake” cake, so in a fit of bad parenting, we ate big slices of it for lunch.  And then we ate some more for second breakfast today (it’s a Hobbit thing), and there’s still plenty for afternoon tea, too!

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This month’s Daring Bakers challenge, a Chocolate Valentino, was terribly apropos for February, the most romantic month in the calendar.

The Chocolate Valentino is a deceptively simple flourless chocolate cake that only has three ingredients: chocolate, butter and eggs.  The idea is that you use your favourite chocolate and are gifted in return with a cake that tastes exactly like the chocolate.

I must confess that I didn’t particularly like this cake.  Perhaps I did something wrong as it didn’t taste anywhere near as sweet as the chocolate I used and rather than having fudgy texture in the centre, it felt wet.  (There was some fudginess going on, but the unpleasant wet texture wiped it away.  I don’t think it was under-baked, though.)  Still, Lucas was a big fan, so I had at least one happy camper!  I wonder if I’m going off chocolate?  I seem to be leaning more towards nutty or fruity desserts these days…

I did however adore the ice cream.  As our hosts gave us a free rein on that subject, I took the opportunity to try a recipe I’ve had my eye on for a while: Toasted Almond Gelato from Gina DePalma’s Dolce Italiano, one of my favourite baking books.  The scent of toasted almonds lingered intoxicatingly around the house for several days, making me smile every time I came home.  It was just wonderful, and slightly less calorific than many other ice creams I’ve made in the past.  I couldn’t bear to throw away all of the almonds used to infuse the cream, so I added a few (finely chopped) spoonfuls into the gelato mixture before freezing which gave great texture to the gelato.

Almond and chocolate are a match made in heaven, so it was no surprise to me that the gelato managed to elevate the chocolate cake into something much more pleasant.  I can’t help wondering what I did wrong, and what it should have tasted like.  Divine, I should imagine…

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

Don’t forget to check out the Daring Bakers Blogroll for other fabulous creations!

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As Comic Book Guy would say… Worst. Xmas. Ever.

This buche de Noel is brought to you by three festive doses (in varying strengths) of the flu—proper flu, none of this “I have a bad cold, so I’ll call it flu” crap—two aggrieved prolapsed discs (me), food-allergy triggered blotchiness & swelling (Dave), and a distinct lack of appetite for anything (all of us).  Even for dessert.

It probably goes without saying that I’m a little cranky, too.

At any rate, on to the challenge.  This month’s challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux.  They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand

I was so excited about this month’s challenge.  I babbled for days to Lorraine about it, and started it with such enthusiasm.  And then the ‘flu hit.  Now I have zero enthusiasm for the buche or indeed, any form of food.  (I don’t feel any thinner yet, but I’m still hopeful.)

My chosen flavour combinations were a coconut dacquoise, white chocolate ganache insert, mango mousse, ginger creme brulee, and a gorgeously glossy (but very tempermental) white chocolate icing.  I went all Blue Peter and created a mould out of an old plastic bottle, some cardboard and sticky tape.  I’m really happy with how ithe shape turned out and I’d certainly make my own mould again rather than buy a tin that’s only going to be used once a year.

Oh, I should mention that I added some popping candy to the coconut crisp insert and it stayed nicely pop-py, which was quite cool.  It was a shame that I didn’t like the taste of the rest of the layer.  I suspect, that gavottes aren’t quite my thing and I should have just bought a box of Rice Krispies or asked around and begged some from a friend.

On the whole, I did like the buche, but I was by no means blown away or impressed.  Which makes me really sad, considering how excited I was and also that I dragged myself through its creation when I should have been languishing in bed.  But I would like to thank Hilda and Marion for giving us such a wonderful challenge to end 2008 with!

Sparkling royal icing snowflakes adorn the top of the buche.

Making this cake was torture.  Darkly sweet, delicious torture.

I can’t remember the last time that a chocolate cake smelled so rich, dark and divine while making the batter.  And once it went into the oven, it just smelled even better.  Like I said, torture.  And I couldn’t even have a slice when it was cooled… it had to sit overnight in the fridge before it could be released from its tin.  Still, all good things come to she who waits…

When the lovely Lorraine aka NotQuiteNigella announced her Ultimate Chocolate Cake Challenge, I knew I had to make something.  We haven’t had chocolate cake in what feels like a lifetime, and this was the perfect excuse.  Thanks, Lorraine!

My copy of Alice Medrich’s Chocolate and The Art of Low-Fat Desserts has been sitting on the shelf without having seen much action since last summer.  After all the buzz surrounding this book a few years ago, I had been a bit disappointed with the couple of recipes that I had tried.  But I wanted to give it another chance, so after flashing a few recipes in front of Dave, I settled on making her ‘The New Chocolate Decadence’.

Chocolate decadence aka chocolate nemesis, was the cake of the 90s.  The River Cafe’s version was infamous for not working as written in their big blue book, but sinfully good if you ever managed to get a table at the restaurant.  Almost every restaurant had their own version on the menu.  And then it fell from grace somehow and disappeared.

You know what?  I think it’s time that the chocolate nemesis had a renaissance.

As you might expect from the name and description, this is an incredibly rich cake.  I can’t quite see how the original could be any richer, but given that the standard chocolate nemesis contained double the amount of chocolate, more eggs, and an obscene amount of butter… I guess it really can get even richer!

This version was plenty rich enough for me, though, and I wear my chocoholic’s hat when I say that.  The texture of the slice pictured may look dense, but looks are deceiving as this cake is light as air and melts as soon as it hits the tongue.  I fear that my cake was overcooked slightly—alas, the thermostat is a bit dodgy now—as it cracked on top, and it wasn’t terribly gooey in the middle when I took it out of the oven.  I suspect that it would have had a more mousse-like texture with a few minutes less, but it was still wildly and extravagantly delicious!

I served the cake in small slices with some milk ice-cream which did a wonderful job of tempering the richness of the chocolate and providing balance.  As a bit of an experiment I added some glacé rhubarb which tasted divine, but wasn’t quite ballsy enough to stand up to the chocolate.  I think a Seville orange sauce would work really well—it’s a classic combination for a reason!!  (Although, I can’t help wondering what this would be like with some warm coffee-infused creme anglaise puddled round it…)

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I’ve always been envious of those food bloggers who got together to bake, whether via Skype—and may I just say how brave you are to have laptops in the kitchen with flour and batter flying—or in person.  So when my friend Kate, who was visiting for the weekend, said that she quite fancied doing some baking, I practically bit her hand off.

After some deliciously sugary discussion, we settled on making some chocolate cupcakes—two ways—which would slake her craving for chocolate and let me indulge my new-found fondness for cupcakes.

Amusingly, Lucas has re-christened Auntie Kate to Auntie Cake, which is terribly appropriate given how much chatting we’ve been doing recently about cakes and baking in general.  He did look a little sad when we picked Kate up at the train station and discovered that she was not, in fact, made of cake.  He did perk up again when he realised that we would be making cakes, though.

I’m months, years behind the curve on the whole Cupcake Craze thing, but now that I’ve discovered their joys, I’m really enjoying baking them.  I recently treated myself to the Wilton Cupcake Decorating Kit, which seems to be the only way (in the UK) to get hold of the huge 1M piping nozzle for big, sexy swirls of frosting atop your cupcakes.  I don’t mind duplicating some tips, but it does seem a bit mad that you have to buy a set when you just want one tip!  Along with that, I managed to find some nice foil liners at a decent price, so pretty cupcakes are mine at last!

Anyway, cupcakes.  We turned one simple chocolate cupcake recipe into Black Forest (ish) cupcakes and Chocolate Decadence cupcakes.  I say ‘ish’ as I’m acutely aware that it should really have a whipped cream topping and loads of Kirsch soaked into the cupcakes, but neither of us fancied whipped cream (shock, horror) and there was no Kirsch to be found.

We experimented with adding a chocolate truffle to half of the cupcakes, the idea being that when you bit into the cupcake you’d get a lovely melty centre.  That was the theory at any rate.  Alas, we should have chosen a more solid truffle than a Lintdor, in itself quite melty.  The majority of the truffle disappeared into the cupcake once baked, but it tasted wonderful so we weren’t that sad.  I will try again at some point as I’m certain that it can work.  Perhaps freezing the truffle would help, too…

This half of the cupcakes were iced with a bittersweet whipped chocolate ganache, using a recipe that the lovely Tartlette posted recently.  This was an incredibly rich and heady experience, and whipping the ganache seemed to open out the flavours in the chocolate.  (Do trust me when I say incredibly rich… one was almost too much!  And I’m a chocoholic!)

The other six cupcakes were first filled with some black cherry jam and then topped off with some cream cheese frosting, a cherry, and a final flourish of some grated dark chocolate.  These were utterly scrumptious—I loved all the different textures and biting down through cool, creamy frosting into a fluffy chocolate cupcake is one of life’s little pleasures.

I can’t decide what is better… a dangerously dark and decadent cupcake which leaves you slightly stunned and unable to go back for seconds as you’re still too busy recovering from the first contemplating the complexity of flavours, or a slightly kitsch yet very delicious cupcake that just begs for second helpings.  But… do I really have to decide? Quite simply, these were some of the best tasting—and looking—cupcakes that I’ve ever made.  I reckon that’s because they were made with lots of love and laughter.   And you know, along with friendship, those are the secret ingredients of baking…

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Cookies always go down well at our summer BBQ/party. For one thing, you don’t need a plate to eat them, so you can keep drinking without any awkward juggling of crockery. Always a good thing with alcohol-diminished dexterity! Secondly, and most importantly, no one will notice if you go back for seconds–or thirds–but if you have a huge slab of cake or cheesecake, then people will notice.

These white chocolate and lemon cookies disappeared in double-quick time once the locusts our friends descended, leaving Dave distraught at his lack of cookies. So, I kindly whipped up a second batch for him the next day!

Normally I make the classic combination of white chocolate and macadamia–Dave’s favourite–but I fancied something a bit different… Lemon and white chocolate are happy bedfellows, so I figured that they’d make good cookies. And so they did.

Interestingly, not all of the white chocolate chunks firmed up after baking, so here and there in the cookies were little melty pockets that tasted just like lemon curd. Mmmm… yummy!

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Our hosts for this month’s Daring Bakers challenge are the lovely Meeta of What’s for lunch, Honey? and Tony Tahhan. They took pity on us and offered up a fairly straightforward recipe that wouldn’t leave us sweltering in the kitchen for too long: Pierre Herme’s chocolate éclairs.

I adore éclairs and also have a little bit of a crush on Pierre Hermé, so I was thrilled with this challenge recipe. I often flick through Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé, sighing longingly over each recipe, but always reluctant to commit myself to so much butter and sugar. The Daring Bakers have provided me with the perfect excuse to indulge myself–learning, camaraderie and fun–and I couldn’t be happier.

While I could have made the entire recipe within a day, I chose to spread it over two so that I could take things easy. I’ve only recently been allowed back into the kitchen after having surgery on my right eye, so I felt the need to move slowly, especially where sharp objects are concerned.

I kicked things off with the pastry cream. The challenge rules stated that we had to make the choux pastry with no changes, but we had the option of having one non-chocolate component. I opted to make a coconut pastry cream as I suspected that an all-chocolate experience would be a little too much for my two expert taste-testers.

Anyone who has ever eaten a dark chocolate Bounty bar will tell you that it is a match made in heaven and I hoped that this would be the case with the eclairs.

The pastry cream came together like a dream. Richly scented and flavoured with coconut; I had to hurriedly press a sheet of clingfilm to it otherwise I’d have eaten the whole lot in the name of ‘tasting’.

The chocolate sauce–a necessary component of the chocolate glaze–was next and was so easy to make. It provided a really intense hit of chocolate, unlocking the layers of flavour and making it easy to pick out the more subtle nuances. I’ll definitely be using this recipe again as it wasn’t overly rich or cloying.

The next morning I moved on to the choux pastry which turned out to be pretty damn fabulous. It was a world away from the previous recipe I used in every respect–texture, colour, flavour and behaviour. Taking an extra few minutes to cook out the choux pastry after it forms a ball in the pan really makes a difference to the finished pastry. Clouds of steam billowed up from the bowl of my KitchenAid when I beat the initial paste to cool it slightly before adding the eggs and it looked ever so slightly oily, but I persevered. Upon adding the eggs, that old magic happened and the most beautiful choux pastry emerged. Thick, glossy, silky smooth and sporting the most gorgeous golden glow. This will be my ‘go-to’ choux pastry recipe in future. I can’t say enough how much I loved it.

And so to the actual eclairs. Interestingly Pierre said that the choux pastry must be used warm so I began piping straight away. I am not very good at piping. In fact, I suck at piping so I was dreading this part.

We were instructed to use a 2cm diameter piping tip and after looking at my meagre collection of tips I determined that the best thing to do would be to use the coupler without any tip at all, as that was closest to 2cm. This did seem to make the piping more difficult, but I persevered and by the time that I’d piped my fourth line of pate aux choux I’d managed one presentable line.

You see, in an effort to create perfect éclair shapes, I had opted to follow the lovely Tartlette’s advice to pipe the choux in long lines, freeze, and then cut the éclairs to size. This worked out really well, and if I manage to improve my piping skills then I can see my turning out some really beautiful eclairs in future. Just not today.

Once baked, the éclairs were a little… rustic in appearance, but chocolate glaze can hide a multitude of sins. This is where things went really, really wrong. I think I over-stirred the chocolate when it was melting into the hot cream, as when I added the butter the entire mixture split. After staring in horror at the mess before me, I poured off the fat and gently stirred in the warm chocolate sauce at which point it miraculously recovered. Being greatly daring, I re-added the butter, drop by drop, and the glaze was rescued!

The glaze started to thicken really quickly, despite the warmth of the kitchen, so I had to work fast. After all the trauma of making the glaze I did not want to have to reheat it. So I quickly dipped the éclair tops in the glaze which worked out really nicely and they looked like a million dollars with their slick of chocolate.

And now the home straight… I added some sweetened coconut flakes to the pastry cream, just for a bit of textural interest as well as an added hit of flavour and lightened it with some whipped cream before piping it into the éclair bases and tumbling over a few raspberries. Popped their tops on and voilà! Dark chocolate and coconut éclairs!

I much preferred the éclairs after they’d chilled overnight. I love crisp profiteroles, but for me… éclairs need a bit of extra squidge to reach the proper heights of decadence. The crisp exterior gave way to the most delicious coconut pastry cream which gave up more and more flavour with each chew. And then the chocolate hit. Oh my god, the glaze was obscenely good!

It all melded together to create the Bounty flavour that I was aiming for, but so, so much better. This is a sophisticated and decadent–if not particularly elegant–éclair. Thank-you so much, Meeta and Tony, for a wonderful recipe!

Don’t forget to visit the Daring Bakers Blogroll for more wonderful éclairs!

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Rain, rain… go away. Come again another day.

…please?

The weather has been crazy of late. One minute we have a torrential deluge of rain and the next the temperature rises, sun comes out, and you get that hopeful feeling for just a second… maybe this is it. Maybe this is finally summer!

And then… pitter-patter. More rain.

It was on such a day that I threw together this quick–yet relatively traditional–gelato for Lucas and our niece Maria who we were baby-sitting for the afternoon. They’d both been so patient while I poked around a cookware shop and a bookshop. (Admittedly they did spend ages playing in a toyshop, too. And okay… so I really wanted ice cream, too!)

Stracciatella means “torn apart” in Italian, but in the case of gelato it means the finest chocolate-chip you’ve ever had: cool vanilla ice-cream flecked with tiny pieces of milk chocolate which melt quickly on your tongue alongside the ice-cream. It’s odd how such a simple flavour can take you by surprise. I only added the chocolate as a fun touch for the kids, but it really was fantastic.

This is a Philadelphia-style ice-cream which means that it is egg-free and takes moments to put together. It’s totally kid friendly, especially when you start drizzling chocolate into the ice-cream maker and you suddenly find two little helpers beside you…

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