Chocolate-Coffee Volcano

For my Dads birthday I decided to make him this impressive sounding Chocolate-Coffee Volcano from Nigella Lawson’s Domestic Goddess – my first recipe from the book. The thing I liked about this recipe was that I could make the cake & prepare the cream & have it sitting & waiting just to throw together at the last minute. Also I used Kahlua instead of Tia Maria as that’s what I had in the bar! The cake was very moist & very chocolatey due to all of the cocoa, great tasting cake. The addition of the walnuts, crème, & caramelised sugar brought it up another level & made it that bit more special. As for the ‘look’, well I think I missed the volcano effect a bit as when I put the crème in the middle straight from the fridge there was no running over the edges like molten lava so mine was just a volcano on the brink! I think this is a great combination of flavours & everyone who had a piece loved it.

Chocolate-Coffee Volcano

Cake
300g Caster sugar
140g plain flour, sifted
80g cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
¼ teaspoon salt
4 large eggs, separated, plus 2 more egg whites (from the yolks you need for the café cream)
125ml vegetable oil
125ml water
1 teaspoon vamilla extract
25cm bundt tin, oiled

Café Cream
225ml double cream
6 large egg yolks
3 tablespoons light muscovado sugar
1 tablespoon instant espresso powder

Topping
4 tablespoons Tia Maria or rum (or Kahlua)
125g chopped walnuts
4 tablespoons Demerara sugar
Chef’s kitchen blowtorch

If making to serve right away then make the custard first so it has a good chance to cool before use. Warm the cream gently in a saucepan. Mix the egg yolks, sugar & espresso powder together in a bowl & pour the warm cream over this mixture, whisking to combine/ Pour the mixture back into the now rinsed out pan & cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until it thickens. Pour into a bowl & leave to cool.

Now for the cake. Preheat oven to 180c. In a large bowl mix together 200g of the caster sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, bicarb & salt. In a measuring jug, whisk together the yolks, oil, water & vanilla. Pour over the dry ingredients gradually, beating to combine.

In another bowl, whisk the 6 egg whites until they are foamy & forming soft peaks. Add the remaining caster sugar, a spoonful at a time, still whisking until the whies are thick & shiny & hold their shape. Briskly beat a large dollop of whites into the cake mixture to lighten it, then a third at a time, fold in the remaining whites.

Pour the mixture into the oiled tin & bake for 40 minutes, the cake should then be springy & coming away from the sides. Let the cake cool in its tin on a rack for 25 minutes before turning out.

Sprinkle the Kahlua onto the cake 1 teaspoon at a time, letting the liqueur soak in after each spoon full.

When ready to serve, place the cake on a plate with a lip & fill the centre with walnuts. Pour in the cold custard letting it overflow a bit onto the shoulders & over the sides. Sprinkle the Demerara sugar, a little at a time, so that it doesn’t soak in, on top of the cake, & use a blowtorch to caramelise the top.

Confessions in Groups of Five

Pamela at Posie’s Place tagged me for this meme and with a spare few moments to kill have managed to fill it all out so you now all have some weird & useless facts about my life

5 items in the freezer

1. Frozen espresso cubes for making mad cocktails as suggested by Matt at Abstract Gourmet

2. Plastic Beer stein/mug picked up at Oktoberfest many years ago that has liquid surrounding it that freezes to keep your drinks cold on hot summer days – never actually remember to pull it out & use it though

3. Wine cooler that works in similar manner to above, has cute pictures of Italian waiters running around it & yes this one does get used a lot in summer

4. Lots of frozen soup to take to work for lunch on cold Winters days, I try & make at least one huge batch a week & freeze the leftovers in portions

5. Lots of ice, seems that the freezer wants defrosting every other week – freezer doesn’t get what freezer wants all that often though!

5 items in my closet

1. A Mermaid costume from a fancy dress ‘M’ party a couple of years back, I cant bear to part with it as so many hours of effort went into making it & it was always my dream to find an excuse to dress up as a mermaid

2. Two fancy hats in boxes from race days that I will never wear again

3. A hell of a lot of shoes, big weakness

4. Not many Michael clothes (have hogged the majority of space!)

5. A whole section stuffed full of cute little ‘going out handbags’, another weakness

5 items in my car

1. Picnic blanket & chairs for spontaneous picnicking – has not happened yet though!

2. CD’s of course

3. Melways – who hasn’t got one sitting in the car?

4. Dirt from shipping home plants from Bunning’s that always manage to tip over

5. Not much else, don’t drive very often so haven’t managed to accumulate much crap

5 items in my purse

1. Too many credit cards – not that they do much good as more times than not they are up to the limit!

2. Money – Although disappointingly never as much as I would like to see in there

3. Action photo of Michael & I dancing up a storm at our engagement party

4. Drivers License

5. Medicare Card

Feel free to take part if you want to share the intimate details of your life

Chocolate Espresso Cake

Last night I finally made my birthday cake to take in to work. I made this delectable Chocolate Espresso cake from a recent delicious magazine. It is very rich, being flourless & has 200g of very good dark chocolate, I used 85% cocoa solids. Last time I made it I served it with cream which is really unnecessary, if anything I would serve with some berries. YUM!

Chocolate espresso cake

200g good quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), chopped
1 tablespoon strong prepared espresso coffee
1 tablespoon rum or brandy
2/3 cup (150g) caster sugar
150g unsalted butter
¾ cup (90g) almond or hazelnut meal
5 eggs, separated
Icing sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 180c. Grease & flour a 24cm round or square cake pan.

Place the chocolate, coffee, rum or brandy, sugar & butter in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water until butter & chocolate have melted. Remove from heat & stir it all together.

Add almond or hazelnut meal (I have always used almond), & mix well. Using electric beaters, beat in the egg yolks, one at a time. Beat the egg whites in a separate bowl until soft peaks form. Stir in a couple of spoonfuls into the chocolate mixture, before gently folding in the rest.

Pour into pan & bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in pan before turning out & dust with icing sugar to serve.

Blonde Mocha Layer Cake

Made this cake Thursday night for Janes birthday from Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer book. The cake was delicious though I don’t think it looked all that appealing, the icing was very hard to spread & mine did not end up with a very smooth consistency at all, tasted yum though. Even Nigella doesn’t have a photo of this one in her book so maybe it looks the same for her too! If making this again I would definitely not making the icing first as suggested as it then just hardens in the fridge & you have to leave it out for a while again before spreading, think a lot of time would be saved making it while the cake itself is baking. Also I had nearly the same amount of icing left over as I used on the cake so you could almost halve the quantities unless you like it really, really thick. The cake itself had a very strong coffee flavour which I loved, a lot of mocha recipes are a bit weak I find, this also went really well with the white icing as suggested, here is the recipe

Blonde Mocha Layer Cake

Cake

225g self raising flour
225g very soft unsalted butter, plus more for greasing tins
225g caster sugar
4 teaspoons instant espresso
4 large eggs
approx. 4 tablespoons full-fat milk

for the icing

250g white chocolate
90g very soft unsalted butter
300ml crème fraiche
250g icing sugar, sieved

Preheat the oven to 180c and butter and flour two sandwich tins of 21cm diameter (and just under 5cm deep). But it’s probably best, if it’s at all warm out, to make the icing first and then stash it in the fridge till needed.

So: melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl over some simmering water of else in the microwave. Remove to cool a little, then add the crème fraiche – which you do need rather than ordinary cream, to undercut the otherwise oversweetness of the white chocolate – before gradually beating in the icing sugar. Put the icing in the fridge to set a little.

Now get on with making the cake. The easiest way is just to put the flour, butter, sugar, coffee and eggs is a processor and then, when fully incorporated, pour the milk – processing, again after a little bowl-scraping with a rubber spatula – down the funnel to make a soft, pouring consistency, adding more milk if needed but starting off just with a couple of tablespoons.

Remove the double-bladed knife, then pour and scrape the cake batter into the prepared tins and bake for 25 minutes or until a cake tester (or piece of raw spaghetti) comes out clean and the cakes are beginning to shrink away from the sides. Let them stand in their tines on a wire rack for 10 minutes then turn them out and leave them there till completely cool.

Now, cut out four strips of baking parchment and make a square with them on a cake-plate. Put one of the cakes on top, and add a good dollop of icing, spreading it almost, but not quite, to the sides and then cover with the remaining cake and spread the top and sides generously with the soft, rich, buttery icing. When it’s all done, whip away the pieces of parchment, but not so roughly as to smear the icing over the plate, which would rather defeat the whole exercise.

Depending on the weather, you may want to put the assembled cake back in the fridge for 10 minutes or so before cutting.

Serves 8, or 7 seven if my husband is around.

Chocolate Espresso Cookies Friday 10th Feb 2006

Tomorrow I have friends arriving from Brisbane & we’re all off to visit Jane in hospital so I thought it would be nice to make a little treat to take along. I pinched this recipe from Lex Culinaria. As you can see from the photo mine look nothing like her gorgeous batch, a lot flatter, maybe I shouldn’t have squashed them so much. However as promised they are a delightful little treat. I don’t like things that are too rich & sweet so the dark chocolate & coffee mixture really appealed to me. Heres the recipe straight from Lex…

Chocolate Espresso Cookies

225 grams bitter-sweet (semi-sweet) dark chocolate
50 grams (about 2 tablespoons) butter
1 egg, plus two egg whites
50 grams brown sugar
50 grams white sugar
30 ml crazy strong coffee
100 grams almond meal
60 grams flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Melt chocolate and butter in the top of a double boiler over medium heat. Whip eggs and sugar on high speed until pale and frothy, about 10 minutes. Stir chocolate mixture into egg mixture. Stir in coffee. Sift almonds, salt, flour and cinnamon together and mix into wet ingredients. Don't worry if your batter looks too runny to be cookie dough, it's supposed to look that way. Pour batter into a shallow plastic pan (one of those black plastic glad bake pans works well) and refrigerate for 3 or 4 hours, until the dough is chilled and firm. Roll dough into balls the size of a hard-boiled egg yolk. Dip each ball in sugar and then squash them flattish with the bottom of a glass or mug. If you'd rather not get your hands all sticky, you could roll the dough into a log, coat the log in sugar and slice cookie rounds from the log instead of making the balls. This should make 35 or 40 small cookies. Each cookie will run you about 70 Calories and 3 grams of fat.
You could reduce the fat and calorie count even more by using more flour and less almond meal and by substituting cocoa powder for some of the chocolate. Just remember to add a bit more sugar if you do that, as the semi-sweet chocolate has sugar in it that cocoa does not.
Bake in a 325F oven for 12 minutes.

Dish at Byron Bay Wednesday 16th November 2005

Wednesday night we tried out Dish, another find in the Gourmet traveller restaurant guide.

Again the decor was lovely & the food beautifully presented & tasty

To start with I had Pan seared King prwans with salt Cod brandade, Jerusalem arthichoke puree, oyster mushrooms & deep fried grated beetroot which added a nice touch of colour.

This was followed with a Baked potato gnocchi with chorizo, confit of garlic & onion, primavera sauce & shaved peccorino, lovely flavours though way too much chorizo for my liking. Michael polished off all of my leftovers so it wasnt a problem though unfortunately for him I had shed one of my long blonde hairs in the dish & Michael got it stuck in his mouth, the sight off him open mouthed in this fine place trying to extract the stray hair had me in stictches for a long time, always nice to have such an unprepared belly laugh. After finally freeing his mouth of my locks he still dug in & finished the rest!

For dessert I had a warm white chocolate fondant with blood orange & vanilla bean sacue & fresh watermelon, absolutley luscious. I washed this down with an affotnini for something different. This was a cocktail of honey vodka, vanilla vodka, espresso & a dash of cream, yum, yum, yum, I will have to try & recreate that one at home for sure

Again if you're ever in Byron - put this one on the list