Chocolate and almond marble cake

Yes I bought another bundt tin. It was on sale!! Okay I suppose Selfridges puts them on sale every year but still. I think if I get the Bavaria tin which is used mainly for the Tunnel of Fudge cake, I will be happy and complete. Just as well they don't sell them in the UK that frequently, and by frequently I mean in a place other than the internet.

Today's cake comes from the book Bundt cookbook by Nordic Bakeware. By book, it's more of a pamphlet with some very random recipes in. Unfortunately a lot using mixes, but bizarrely lots of gelatin moulds. Moulded salmon anyone? In a ten-cup mould no less. Anyway, the recipe I used was the Orange/Chocolate Marble cake, but as we didn't have any orange extract I used almond. Things you should also know was that I screwed up reading the recipe and forgot to dissolve the cocoa in water before I added it to the mix, which was why I was mixing it thinking, why did I whip egg whites if it ends up as this stupidly stiff mixture?? Oops. Whereupon I threw in the water and it turned into liquid chocolate. It turned out very well at the end of the day, and rare for bundts, it needed less than an hour to cook. The proper recipe is as below, I just omitted orange peel and replaced the orange extract for almond.

Ingredients:
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cup caster sugar
4 eggs
2 1/2 plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup milk
1/4 tsp grated orange peel
1/4 tsp orange extract
1/4 cup cocoa
1/4 cup water

Method:
1. Cream butter, sugar, add egg yolks.
2. Mix in flour, baking powder and salt, alternating with milk (usually done by about 1/3 of the dry at a time)
3. Fold in whipped egg whites. (Mine was relatively stiff as a mix, but it does loosen chiffon style once you beat the first half of the whites in.)
4. Halve the mix, mix blended water and cocoa into one batch, the orange flavourings into the second batch.
5. Marble in the pan.
6. Bake at 350 degrees which is about Gas Mark 6 for 50-60 minutes. A little less would have been fine so start checking after 45min.

Comments

Rachel Allen's Chicken Pie

Some things should be noted. I'm not a major fan of Rachel Allen. She always seemed such a poor man's version of Nigella. Some trophy wife of a producer somewhere making a lady of leisure's living of cookery shows playing up the Irish accent in a cavernous show kitchen. Perhaps it was because all her helpful "tricks" had already been touted by others a long time ago - like getting the garlic smell out of your hands... But over the years she's kind of grown on me. The format is a little twee, the pink accessories want to make me barf, but she isn't the spawn of all things faux goddess anymore. (FYI I have no idea with regards to her personal life etc, but like my distaste for Ashley Judd, one wonders how she gets good films with little acting skill.) So here I was, tapping away on the internet last week whilst she was on tv, and there it was. A beast of a pie. It was so beautiful. Her job was done. Out I trotted to buy a huge pie dish (we don't own cera...

Raspberry Cream Cheese Buns

What with my new cupcake books arriving from Amazon, one look at the Raspberry Cream Cheese buns on someone elses's site (made with blackcurrant there) and I had to make them. Knowing full well my family wouldn't touch them. Four of these babies were therefore made with big dollops of lemon curd instead, which made delightfully caramelly messes of the tin, but also on the buns, not that I get to touch those - I have eight buns to eat! The original recipe is from Buttercup Bakery book (New York) and one of these days I'll try the dried cherry one from Magnolias (since I own the book...) What you need to know about these is that the recipe is easy - as easy as muffins are, but they sink like heck given the amount of preserves you're putting in them. What they give back though, is something so moist and rich you just want to sink yourself into them. And since I've eaten two of them, I'm doing quite well! As you can see, massive craters. If you don't want that...

Lemon Cake by Nigel Slater

I think I've been failed by Nigel Slater. It's very disturbing. Now he says he's not a cake man anyway, he's predominantly mains, ice cream and the odd fruit based dessert. However, I had poppy seeds, so I decided to borrow his recipe from Kitchen Diaries and tweak. I have to say it was an easy to make, albeit I judge him for requesting 90g of ground almonds when the packets come in 1oog amounts. So anyway, the cake. Which I forgot to add the poppy seeds to until the cake was in the pan. But I digress. Why did I feel the cake failed? Well it lacked the lemony-ness one craves. But, even worse - although might be partially my fault.... it tasted quite bitter when warm. That could be because that's an entire lemon with peel sitting on the top. Or it could be that I made the syrup in the pan that held the slightly caramelised lemons. Oh well. Live and learn. And also figure out a way to use the shredded coconut that's in the cupboard...

Obsession

Search This Blog