A Quite Sophisticated Chocolate Cake

You may be thinking to yourself that a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting is a bit boring but I felt compelled to share it with you because this cake is truly something special.

The special ingredient is sour cream, which is present in both the cake and the chocolate ganache frosting. It really gives the cake much more depth of flavour.

It is taken from Nigella Lawson's "How to be a Domestic Goddess" and confirms her position as the queen of chocolate.

Rhubarb Crumb Cake

Hi all! Sorry for the hiatus, I've been really bust with final assignments for college and now with studying for exams, so baking hasn't really been top of my agenda.

I read about the blog Smitten Kitchen over the weekend and decided to give it a look.

I can honestly say that it is the best food blog I've ever read.

Everything just looks so delicious and her food photography skills are very impressive, I want to eat it all! I recommend that everyone gives it a look.

Anyway, I had some rhubarb knocking around the house so I decided to make this recipe from the blog.

It was really scrumptious, with a gingery sponge base, sharp rhubarb filling and a crumb topping.

You could of course swap the rhubarb for any filling you fancy.

Continue for recipe!

Brown Sugar-topped Mascarpone Scones

I'm not really a scone person. To me, they're more like bread than cake and that's no fun at all.

I saw this recipe in my Lorraine Pascale book (becoming a regular feature on this blog, I know) and they sounded divine, which, coupled with the fact that there was some left over mascarpone cheese in the fridge, meant that I had to make them.

I decided to liberally sprinkle these with some demerara sugar after I had glazed them. This gave them a lovely crunchy top, which was a nice contrast to the dense, rich texture of the scones.

Delicious.

Continue reading for recipe.

Banana and Walnut Loaf

I have been feeling pretty under the weather and I wanted to bake something comforting.

This banana bread did the trick.

I don't know why, but for some reason I never seem to be able to get banana bread right at all.

It always seems to sink when it comes out of the oven for me.

This one, which I adapted from Lorraine Pascale's Baking Made Easy book, came out perfectly.

I haven't figured out why this batch turned out ok and my other banana bread endeavours didn't, but this will definitely be the recipe I work from in the future.

I used dark brown sugar, which I think gave the loaf a lovely rich, deep flavour. You may choose to use caster sugar or light brown sugar, which is used in the original recipe.

I like to eat mine slavered in butter, how do you like to eat yours?

Continue reading for recipe

Basil Focaccia

Today I was having a bolognese for dinner.

I love bolognese combined in the traditional way with spaghetti but today I just felt like something different, so I made this bread to accompany my sauce.

I'm not very experienced in the art of bread making and I've only ever made sweet bread until now.

I think one of the reasons I shied away from bread is because I had this idea in my head that it was really hard to make I thought that I would find it difficult to know whether I had kneaded it enough or left it to prove for long enough or any other number of worries.

What I've learned it that really there's no need to worry about these things. Most recipes will give you quite detailed instructions, so you will know whether your dough is the right consistency or exactly how long you need to let it prove for.

It is quite simple, really!

Focaccia is quite a simple bread to make, with few ingredients in it.

I dotted the top of mine with finely chopped basil, but you can use whatever herb you want depending on what you're serving it with.

Continue reading for recipe.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone, I hope you have spent the day gorging yourselves on chocolate.

I made these easter nest cupcakes a few days ago for my little cousins.

Very simple to make: just use your favourite chocolate cupcake recipe. Decorate them with a chocolate buttercream frosting mixed with some smashed up Shreddies  to give it that "nest" look and then place a few mini eggs on top. Cute!

Here's a few snaps of them gobbling them up!

Dark Chocolate-Dipped Nutty Shortbread

This recipe is really adaptable. You can use any variety of nuts you want, I had a selection of hazelnuts, pecans and walnuts. I used brown sugar to give the shortbread a more interesting caramelized flavour, but the traditionalists among you may choose to use caster sugar instead. I wouldn't if I were you though because the flavours of brown sugar and toasted nuts complimented each other beautifully.

The addition of chocolate is also entirely optional. I think that the biscuits looked more attractive without it, in my opinion, everything is better with chocolate!

Pre- vs. post-dipping!

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