Friday 14 March 2014

Chocolate Guinness Cake (and a mini chocolate tasting lesson.)

And so the the cake. It was a massive affair for four people but I do think that afternoon tea should be overly generous in sustenance. (Most of the leftovers can be frozen afterwards.) 

Last summer I had a slice of Chocolate Guinness Cake with a friend at High Tea of Highgate. It was memorably yummy so needed to be tried out.



This recipe is Gizzi Erskine's which I followed to the letter (almost). 

But first a chocolatey deviation. My Matey works in chocolate. (Yes I do get to try some amazing chocolates. No he doesn't bring home vats of the stuff for me.) Good dark chocolate isn't necessarily 70%. Where it comes from is far more impactful on the flavour than the percentage. Also different regions offer different flavours. Think of it like wine. Now before you pipe up with the complaint that not everybody has access to a range of chocolates, think again. Over the past few years the supermarkets have learnt about this and offer ranges of chocolate bars based on region with descriptions of what it tastes like. So when choosing your chocolate to cook with you can bear in mind what you are making and pick a chocolate with notes which will work well and enhance the food with more taste than just 'chocolate'.

For this cake my Matey came up with a pairing of Valrhona 62% MacaĆ© Brazilian dark chocolate to work with the dark richness of the Guinness. Before you assume that it is going to be incredibly expensive it is available for around £3 for 110g in a number of places on the internet so only about £1 more expensive than a 'normal' brand.


Ingredients
250ml Guinness
250g Butter, sliced
100g Dark chocolate
35g Cocoa
400g Caster sugar
142ml Plain yoghurt
2 Eggs
1 tblsp Real vanilla extract
275g Plain flour
2 ½ tsp Bicarbonate of soda

Icing 
300g Cream cheese
150g Icing sugar
125ml Double cream

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Butter and line a 21cm round tin. 
2. Pour the Guinness into a large wide saucepan, and heat until the butter has melted, at which time you 
should stir in the chocolate, cocoa and sugar. Very gently heat until the chocolate has melted and the sugar is dissolving then take off the heat.
3. Beat the yoghurt with the eggs and vanilla and then pour into the chocolatey, beery pan.
4. Finally whisk in the flour and bicarbonate of soda.
5. Pour the cake batter into the greased and lined tin and bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Leave to cool completely in the tin on a cooling rack, as it is quite a damp cake. Do not be tempted to take the cake out of the tin until it is totally cold. My first go at this resulted in a cake which collapsed into four pieces.
6. To make the icing whip the cream cheese until smooth, sieve over the icing sugar and beat them together.
7. Separately whip the cream until it just begins to thicken then pour the cream to the cream cheese mix and beat again until combined and reaches a spreadable consistency. 
8. Ice the top of the Guinness cake. You can make it look pretty by covering the sides as well but it looks more Guinness-like with just the top done.

And the verdict? Jolly good. It's a LOT better made a day in advance. If I make it again I would 
probably swap the white sugar for a brown one to up the flavour a bit. Possibly would also try to up the chocolate content a bit more.

Monday 10 March 2014

A simply SPLENDID afternoon tea

Afternoon tea is one of our favourite things. As long there are plenty of scones with jam and clotted cream my Matey and I are pretty content. Afternoon tea with friends on Sunday gave us the opportunity to use my grandmas surprisingly cool tea set and a bunch of daffodils and the dilemma of what else to have.


Sandwiches (with no crusts of course) were kept simple and easy with:

Cheddar with posh chutney: We usually go for whatever is on offer in the mature cheddar department so splash out on a really good chutney which makes a bog standard cheese taste amazing. This time we had Tomato, apple and rosemary jam from The Ginger Pig. Yes it is a bit pricey at £5.50 a jar but it lasts ages and makes whatever you have lurking at the back of the fridge taste great.

Marmite butter and cress: Nigella's marmite butter (mix marmite with butter then spread on the bread) with cress. My other grandma used to do this and the peppery cress works well with the salty marmite.

Goat's cheese with red pepper and walnut: This idea was nicked from the internet and simplified. Very soft goats cheese, (Making it spreadable, the original recipe called for mixing the goats cheese with cream cheese. I couldn't be bothered!) roasted red peppers and ground walnuts. Good  but not sure that i t was as good as it sounded or worth the effort.

Lemony honey chicken: Left overs from the night before. Simple but very tasty.

For the scones I played fast and loose with my usual method and tried out Mary Berry's recipe with eggs in it. Having never heard of scones with eggs in them I was deeply suspicious but the resulting scones were very good. If truth be told I wouldn't bother with eggs (and the extra expense) for gardening scones  but it's probably worth it for a fancier tea.


My favorite moment however was the deploying of the incredibly useful muffin warmer as a clotted cream cooler. Crushed ice was packed into where the hot water would go and we had lovely cool clotted cream all afternoon.


This was the day that my Matey and I discovered that we are on opposing teams regarding clotted cream placement. He thinks it should go on top of the jam I consider this to be nonsensical and put the jam on top of the clotted cream...it's only logical, you wouldn't put butter on top of jam would you?

Of course this was all washed down with copious quantities of rose earl grey tea and much chitter chatter.


As for the cake....oh what a cake it was! So much so it fully deserves a post of its very own.

Friday 7 March 2014

Stop breezy papers dead with a Dodo.

Well good gracious me it's been two and half months since I put paw to keyboard. Do not think I have been idle. Oh dear me no! I've been plotting, planning and trying thing out Blue Peter style. Finally I am pleased to launch the first round of new Mountain & Molehill products.













Now that isn't it. Oh No! There is more a-coming but you'll just have to be patient..........I have also done a load of other bit's and bobs but more on that another day.

I'm also on the hunt for a new PROJECT. No I really don't have the time for it but having a project stops me from going a bit loopy.
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