Devil's food cake

There has been an extreme lack of blogging recently on my part, partly due to a huge lack of time (and a little laziness) but also due to the extreme lack of baking (also due to a huge lack of time and a little laziness). I'm not really sure why, but things have been really busy. I have been doing more sport which I guess has taken up a few extra evenings, so that might explain it. Anyhow, I'm back, and whilst there might not be too much baking going on in the next couple of weeks (for reasons I'll explain later) I have more baking plans now!

So a while back, I made a Devil's food cake. I had found the recipe previously and wanted to give it a go, and at some point I found I had a bit of spare time and felt that a cake would go down quite nicely. The recipe is one of Nigella's and can be found here. It is basically rich, chocolately goodness and is perfect for when chocolate cravings hit.

The cake is lovely and moist, possibly due to the amount of water added to the cake batter. The nice thing is that the ganache is quite bitter, not at all sweet, and so whilst the cake is rich, it is not one of those which leaves you feeling sick at the end (which is what often happens to me if I eat chocolate cake from a coffee shop chain). I only made 2/3 of the quantity of ganache in the recipe, mostly because I only had 200g chocolate, not 300g. However, I found that this was more than enough, and is possibly also another reason that this cake left me feeling satisfied, not ill.

A few weeks later I made another one of these cakes but decorated it more this time. It was a belated birthday celebration cake for my Mum and so I felt that an extra touch was necessary. These stars can be bought in supermarkets or cake supplies shops and against the dark chocolate they look really effective.

I'll definitely be baking another one of these soon, my other half has requested one to take to work!

Due to not having much time this week and to me leaving on Sunday for a course for work, I probably won't get any baking done until the weekend after next. However, after that I have plans!

Chocolate brownies - maybe even better than my (previous) favourites!

So again, this may not look like much... but this chocolate brownie recipe was amazing! It actually included an icing, but after letting the brownie cool I decided that the icing would probably spoil it. I think it was the right decision as well, as the brownie was delicious just as it was.

The sponge (can you call it 'sponge' if it's brownie?) was gooey and soft, but not too dense or overly rich. This brownie had just the right consistency - gooey and sticky, but a little cakey. The main difference recipe-wise between this and my previous favourite brownies is that this one did not have any chocolate in the batter (just cocoa powder and chocolate chips) and used only caster sugar, instead of a mix of granulated and muscovado sugars. This means that these brownies are less fudgy, but I liked them better as they were less dense and little more cakey (all the time retaining the stickiness and gooey-ness of brownies). The white and milk chocolate chips were the perfect extra.

In the picture above the brownie doesn't look much; as with the last cake I was taking it to work so didn't want to cut it until I got there. The taste more than makes up for it though!

Lemon drizzle cake

Unfortunately this cake is not much to look at, but that's essentially because it is a traybake rather than a cake in the traditional sense. In any case, the taste makes up for its boring look!

I decided to make a lemon drizzle cake as it's my friend Eley's birthday tomorrow, and cake at work on your birthday is a must. I also made some chocolate brownies (new recipe, post to follow!) as Laura who we also work with celebrates her birthday this weekend too, and I wanted to make sure there was enough to go around. I knew Eley likes lemon drizzle cake but as it turned out, this is also Laura's favourite cake so it was a good choice all round!

The recipe was one I'd found in Good Food magazine a while ago and kept as it looked a) simple and b) yummy. My judgement was right on both counts! The recipe is a simple cake, full of lemon zest for flavour (butter, sugar, SR flour, milk, baking powder, eggs and lemon zest) and to make it even tastier, a lemon juice/sugar syrup is poured over the cake whilst it's still warm. It makes the cake moist and gives it a slightly crunchy topping.

This is a definite keeper - yummy, light cake (and dare I say it, a nice change from chocolate!).

Sachertorte - Dad's 60th birthday take 2

So this year my Dad decided to be greedy and have two birthdays. Admittedly it's not every year you turn 60 and it's quite a milestone so really he was entitled to it! Anyway, for his actual birthday I made the fruit cake and we celebrated with my other half and his family, and he decided he wanted a family celebration too for my brother, my brother's girlfriend and my uncle. Plus it was a good excuse for a holiday!

I was asked if I could make a cake and I'm definitely not one to turn down an excuse to bake! I had the perfect cake as well: a Sachertorte. I fell in love with this cake when I lived in Austria and have made it many times since. The recipe is one my family there got from a magazine years ago - the original Sachertorte recipe is top secret. However, this recipe is the best I've ever tasted.

Sachertorte is a chocolate cake with apricot glaze through the middle and under the glaze, and the glaze is a bitter chocolate icing. It is the perfect chocolate cake in my opinion: not at all sweet, very chocolatey and a very balanced flavour. The cake is not too heavy, but at the same time it's dense enough that every bite of cake contains a lot of flavour. It uses plain flour and no baking powder; instead it is the eggs which cause it to rise (it uses six and the whites are whisked separately to make snow)

I have to admit to using ready-made Sachertorte glaze, bought in Austria, rather than making my own. It's so good that I haven't dared try making my own, although now that my supply has run out, I might have to start doing so soon however as I haven't got any trips to Vienna in the pipeline at the moment! The only bit I wasn't very happy with was the writing - I used a white chocolate icing pen and if you leave it for any amount of time, it seeps and widens - it does not hold its shape at all. Next time I'll try making royal icing and piping it on.

This is my favouritest chocolate cake in the world! It disappeared very quickly (my brother would have licked the cake plate clean if I had allowed him to!) and my Dad enjoyed his second 60th birthday!

The best cookies ever!

Now these cookies might not look anything special, but believe me when I say that they are the best cookies ever! The recipe is based on one from The First Time Cook by Sophie Grigson (the same book that my extremely chocolatey brownies recipe came from). It is another really simple recipe, and the beauty is that you can add whatever you like to the cookie mix. I think the original recipe is for cookies with pecans and dried apricots, but I used chocolate chips. I've also made them with Smarties before and I think those were even better! The basic recipe, however, is the best cookie recipe I've come across.

The cookie dough is simple: butter (I used margarine), sugar, self-raising flour, milk and then whatever you want to add. They bake in 10-14 minutes, and the end result is soft, chewy cookies - exactly how I like them! They keep well for a few days in an airtight container, but the chances of keeping them that long are pretty slim - I can guarantee that given a chance, people will snap up these cookies!

I'm going to try them with cocoa powder in next to see whether I can make good chocolate cookies from the same recipe. Watch this space for the answer!

You can also find the original recipe here.

Vanilla sponge cake

I'm still catching up on blogging about the baking that I've done over the past couple of weeks, but I'm getting round to it! This is going to be a short post as there's not really a huge amount to say about it. I made a vanilla sponge cake for my other half's cricket match, using the Hummingbird bakery's Cake Days vanilla cupcake recipe. A note on the recipe advised doubling it to make a three tier cake, but thinking that three tiers would be a bit much, I decided to stick to the quantities given for cupcakes. It turned out that this was a very good decision as the cake was the perfect height (this was using two 20cm cake tins).

I adapted the recipe slightly as I used vanilla bean paste instead of vanilla extract - having procured some recently, I wanted to see how much difference it would make.

The answer is that it makes quite a lot of difference. The sponge had a much fuller vanilla flavour. Added to that was vanilla buttercream icing, again made using the vanilla bean paste. That was all topped off with strawberry jam and the result was a lovely, moist, light sponge with lots of flavour. I have to admit that vanilla sponge is not really my thing, nor is buttercream, and I wouldn't have chosen it for myself, but the combination of flavours did work very well.

If you want a simple but impressive cake, this one certainly fits the bill. It is a little sweet, but for those who like their cake that way this is sure to go down a treat! It looks a little plain on top, but I'm always stuck for what to do with vanilla sponge cakes. Any suggestions welcome!

Extremely chocolatey brownies

I've been quiet for a little while but I'm back to baking again! I had a baking session on Saturday afternoon in order to provide a cricket tea on Sunday, so there'll be a couple more posts to follow after this one.

The first thing I made was chocolate brownies. I have made these so many times but they never fail to impress. The recipe is adapted from the one in The First Time Cook by Sophie Grigson (who is fabulous - this book is well worth a look, even if you're not new to cooking or baking). I chose to add chocolate chips rather than nuts as I don't really like nuts in brownies (and more to the point, neither does my other half!). They are really simple to make and don't require too much preparation.

The recipe is not as heavy on chocolate as you might expect, but it does contain a lot of sugar. It calls for a combination of caster sugar and light muscovado sugar, and it is the latter which helps give the brownies their gooey, dense texture. Not very good for diabetics but an indulgent treat for everyone else!

These brownies will not disappoint - they are rich, dense, gooey and very chocolately. Everything you could want from a brownie!