How to: Ultimate "Devil's Food" Chocolate Cake

Hi guys, today was one of those days where I needed some (ok, a lot) of chocolatey goodness.

I happened to be watching Nigella Lawson on television yesterday and saw her make a Devil's Food Cake and I thought I'd give it a go myself.

What you need for the cake:

50g cocoa powder

100g dark muscovado sugar

125g unsalted butter

150g caster sugar

225g plain flower

baking powder and bicarbonate of soda

vanilla extract

2 eggs

water

What you need for the frosting:

30g dark muscovado sugar

175g unsalted butter

300g dark chocolate

water

Firstly, preheat your oven to 180°C/Gas mark 4/350°F.

Put your cocoa powder and muscovado sugar into a container, boil the kettle and pour in 250ml (one cup full) of boiling water in with it. 

Mix together and set aside for later.

Make sure your butter is soft, and cream together with the caster sugar.

Add a few glugs of vanilla essence, half a teaspoon of bicarb and half a teaspoon of baking powder.

Then crack in one egg and pour in half of your flour. Mix it all together and then add the second egg and the remaining flour.

Once mixed, add in the chocolatey concoction you set aside earlier.

The consistency is very runny...don't worry!

Pour your cake mix equally into two greased cake tins. Mine are about 7/8inches diameter.

Put your cakes into your preheated oven for 30 minutes.

Now we can move onto the frosting.

In a pan add 125ml water (half a cup), the butter and muscovado sugar. Turn on a low heat and allow the butter to melt and combine.

When the mixture starts to bubble slightly, add in your chocolate. It's best to chop it up finely so it melts quickly. Take the mixture off the heat.

Once the chocolate has melted, whisk until it's smooth and glossy. Allow to cool and thicken up. This can take a good hour or more.

After 30 minutes in the oven, your cakes should be done! Leave them on a wire rack for about ten minutes to cool slightly before turning them out of their tins.

Once your cakes have cooled, turn one upside down on your cake stand/plate.

Pour on a few dollops of your frosting mix and then place the second cake on top.

My frosting mixture had stood for over an hour and was still too runny as you can see in the picture above, so I decided to pop it into the freezer for another half an hour or so and it hardened up perfectly.

Spread the remaining mixture over the cake and round the sides.

And you're done!

Rich, chocolatey, gooey heaven.

Enjoy!

x

How to: Cadbury's Creme Egg Chocolate Brownie Recipe

I can't believe it's April already! I intended to get this recipe up for before Easter, but I've only just managed to put this post together today. So, if you've got some leftover Cadburys Creme Eggs floating around your house from Easter, you should definitely give this recipe a try!

This is not one for the faint hearted!

You will need:

Cadbury's Creme Eggs - mini or regular size, both work just fine. I'm using mini ones in this tutorial.

100g of brown sugar.

250g bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk.

One egg.

125g of room temperature butter.

120g of self raising flour.

1/2tsp of baking powder.

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Mix together the butter and brown sugar until smooth.

Whilst you are doing this, melt your chocolate in the microwave. Put in for 30 seconds at a time and stir in between. It will only take around 1 minute or less to melt.

Add one egg and the chocolate into the mix.

Mix together again.

Add the flour and the baking powder.

Mix thoroughly.

Line an oven proof dish/baking tray with greaseproof paper (make sure you grease the greaseproof paper - I wasn't aware you had to and it all stuck to the paper the first time I made the brownies!!)

My dish is about 10x10inches.

Spread the mixture evenly into the dish.

Push the Cadbury's Creme Eggs into the mixture.

Into your preheated oven, put the mixture onto the middle shelf and bake for 30 minutes.

Wait for the brownies to cool (or as long as you can bear) before cutting into blocks.

Mine turned out quite sticky and hard to cut into definite chunks, but to be honest no one seemed to mind!

Yum yum.

Enjoy with ice-cream or on their own.

Let me know if you try it out!

xxx

How to: Leek and Potato Soup

I fancied some of my favourite soup today, good old L&P.

Yum yum.

If you want to learn how to make Leek and Potato soup, here's my recipe.

What you need:

A bunch of leeks. I used five.

A couple of potatoes.

An onion.

A stock cube - veg or chicken.

Some milk - just under half a pint.

A bit of butter.

Salt and black pepper to season.

Creme Fraiche and chives to garnish.

Chop your leeks...

...onion...

...and potatoes into small chunks.

In a large pan, melt the butter...

...and add in all of your veg and give it a stir. Season with salt and plenty of black pepper. Put a lid on the pan and let the veggies sweat for about 15 minutes on a low heat.

After 15 minutes or so, add a pint and a half of stock and just under half a pint of milk.

Bring the heat up to a simmer and put the lid on again. Let it simmer for another 20 minutes or so - or until the veg is soft.

Now blend...

...and serve.

I like to blob a bit of creme fraiche and a sprinkle of chives on top to garnish and serve with a side of crusty bread.

Mmmmm!

xxx

Jamie Oliver's Mega Chocolate Fudge Cake

Today I was having a bad day so decided that the only way that anything was going to get any better was to make something extremely unhealthy and extremely chocolatey. 

And here's the outcome...

Jamie Oliver's Mega Chocolate Fudge Cake

And here's how you make it! 

(I'll write the whole recipe out at the end of the post if you want to try these yourself...and you definitely should.)

Gather your ingredients; dark chocolate, butter, soft brown sugar, self-raising flour, almonds, fudge, cocoa powder, salt and four eggs. I actually forgot to put the salt in, which didn't really matter I don't think because salt's bad for you anyway...she says, adding half a block of butter into the cake mix.

Jamie suggests just blending all the ingredients together in a food processor. I don't have one, so I blitzed the chocolate and almonds into a powder with a gadget of my mum's and then just mixed everything together with our mixer.

Grease a baking tray and pour the mixture into it. Mine didn't pour, even after adding an extra egg and some milk to attempt to thin it out, so I just spatula'd it into the tray and flattened it out.

Add blocks of fudge and push down into the mix, as well as sprinkling some on top.

Put in a pre-heated oven (160°C / 320°F / Gas Mark 2) for 18-20 minutes.

Mine took about 23 minutes as my mixture was piled quite thick. Depending on the size/depth of your baking tray, check accordingly.

Stab a knife in the middle and check that only a little bit of cake mixture comes out on the blade. If there's a lot of drippy cake mix, put it back in the oven for another few minutes. If there is a little/no cake mix, then it's done!

Cut into chunks and admire. Eat with plenty of ice cream.

I also tried out another Jamie recipe from his 15 Minute Meals book and it was bloody awful so I'm not even going to tell you how to do that one... Looked nice but tasted vile.

Here's the whole recipe and steps from Jamie's Ministry of Food Book for the cake.

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MEGA CHOCOLATE FUDGE CAKE

This cake is best made using a food processor, ad you can simply add everything and blitz it up together, but you can easily make it by hand if you buy ground almonds and grate the chocolate into the mix. Like most desserts, this isn't exactly the healthiest thing in the world but it's absolutely gorgeous. Just make sure you enjoy it as it's meant to be enjoyed - a special treat every now and then.

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Serves 8

200g good quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)

175g butter, plus extra for greasing

120g soft brown sugar

100g blanched almonds

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

a pinch of salt

4 large eggs, preferably free-range or organic

150g self-raising flour

100g fudge

creme fraiche or vanilla ice cream

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TO MAKE YOUR CAKE

Preheat the oven to 160°C / 320°F / Gas Mark 2. Break up the chocolate, put it into a food processor with the butter, sugar, almonds, one tablespoon of the cocoa powder and the salt, and whiz until smooth. Crack your eggs, one at a time, into the food processor and add the flour. Whiz again until smooth.

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TO BAKE YOUR CAKE

Get a deep baking dish roughly 25 x 25cm in size. Butter the dish really well and sprinkle the remaining tablespoon of cocoa powder over it. Shake it around a bit so it lightly coats the whole surface of the dish. Pour the cake mixture into the dish, using a spatula to scrape it all out of the processor. Break the fudge into pieces and sprinkle these over the top of the cake mix, pushing any larger pieces down into the mixture. Pop the baking dish into the preheated oven and cook for 18-20 minutes. Take the cake out of the oven and stick a fork into the middle of it. If there's a little bit of cake mixture on the fork when you pull it out, that's okay - you want the cake to still be a little moist inside so that it's nice and squidgy. However, if it seems a bit wobbly, pop it back into the oven for another 3-5 minutes to firm up a bit.

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TO SERVE YOUR CAKE

Let your cake cool slightly and serve it warm and gooey. Lovely with a dollop of creme fraiche, a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a bit of double cream.