Chocolate Banana Cake

Because I’m now home from college, I have very little to do during the day besides bake and go on my dad’s brand new treadmill (which is probably quite a good combination!). Not everything I bake is worthy of display, but this one is, I think.

I love banana cake. Most of my family do. And it’s the perfect way to use up the over-ripe bananas that so frequently appear in our fruit bowl (because my dad and brothers only eat them slightly green and my mum and I don’t usually eat them as fruit).

I don’t usually follow a particular recipe, and this time, although I did browse the net a bit, was no real difference. I sort of followed this recipe from the BBC Good Food website, but made many modifications. I added cinnamon to the mixture instead of cocoa (not the same amount of course!) and put the chocolate in as chips instead of melted.

I didn’t grease the pan quite enough, so was left with a lot of cake sticking to the bottom, which required patching back on, so I felt I had to put something over the top. Chocolate frosting would have been too much, and any other flavour icing didn’t seem quite right. I finally decided on a very liquid chocolate ganache. It worked very well, and the cake is a huge success. Will definitely be making it again!

Cookie Carnival June - Snickerdoodles

I must admit, I had no idea what to expect when we got the recipe for this month’s cookies. I’d never heard of a snickerdoodle before. But I love cinnamon, so I was perfectly willing to try.

They didn’t quite work the way they were supposed to, and I’m not entirely sure why. They turned out almost more cakey than biscuity, and didn’t really crack on the surface at all. But they were still scrumcious.

My dad, mum and gran all pronounced them the perfect cookies to go with coffee. And I agree. Shall definitely be experimenting with them again in the future!



Makes 4 dozen.

* 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
* 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
* 1/2 cup pure vegetable shortening
* 1 3/4 cups sugar, plus more if needed
* 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon, plus more if needed
* 2 large eggs


Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees, with one rack in top third and
one rack in bottom third of oven. Line baking sheets with Silpat
baking mats or parchment paper; set aside.
2. Sift together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt;
set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle
attachment, combine butter, shortening, and 1 1/2 cups sugar. Beat on
medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Scrape down
sides of bowl. Add eggs, and beat to combine. Add dry ingredients, and
beat to combine.
3. In a small bowl, combine remaining 1/4 cup sugar and the ground
cinnamon. Use a small (1 1/4-ounce) ice-cream scoop to form balls of
the dough, and roll in cinnamon sugar. Place about 2 inches apart on
the prepared baking sheets. Bake until the cookies are set in center
and begin to crack (they will not brown), about 10 minutes, rotating
the baking sheets after 5 minutes. Transfer the sheets to a wire rack
to cool about 5 minutes before transferring the cookies to the rack.
Store in an airtight container up to 1 week.

Mont Diavolo (sort of)

My brother graduated from high school on Friday, and today is the first meal he’s had at home since then, so I offered to make him whatever dessert he wanted. His main requirement was that there be lots of chocolate, and both chocolate cake and chocolate mousse were mentioned. A little bit of searching unearthed this is an old Sainsbury’s chocolate book.

The original recipe was a three-layered affair, with a chocolate cream-mousse, chocolate sponge cake and chocolate icing. The very first change I made was to make a simple chocolate mousse instead of the complicated one in the recipe, which called for a litre of cream and gelatine powder. The second change I decided upon during the construction of the dessert, and that was to omit the icing. It was already rich enough!

This is a slightly more complex recipe than I’m used to attempting anyway, but it was fun to make, and looked quite impressive! The cake part is a Genoese sponge, made by beating the sugar and eggs over heat until they double in size and become stiff. The cake this makes is quite dry and very rich.

The chocolate mousse recipe I used didn’t quite work perfectly, and I really should find a new one – I’ve had trouble with this recipe before. It always ends up denser than I want it to. In this instance, that probably wasn’t a bad thing, because it would help hold up the sponge layer!

The cake went down very well (except for my Gran’s slightly-more-numerous-than-necessary comments about her cholesterol levels). It was very rich and needed the strawberries and cream to lighten it a little (vanilla ice cream may have worked better). Whilst not personally my favourite – I’m more likely to go for a fruity dessert than a chocolate one – I am anticipating repeat requests!




Mont Diavolo

Genoese cake
100g plain flour
40g cocoa powder
½ teaspoon baking powder
4 eggs
150g vanilla sugar (or 150g sugar and ½ tsp vanilla powder)
40g unsalted butter

1. Heat the over to 180°C/350°F
2. break the eggs into a heatproof bowl placed over a pan of hot (not boiling) water and beat in the sugar for 6-8 minutes until the mixture doubles in volume and thickens to stand in soft peaks.
3. Sift all the dry ingredients into the egg mixture and fold them in gently.
4. melt the butter then fold it in gently.
5. pour into a 30x36 cm baking tray, pre-lined with baking parchment, and bake for 12 minutes until just springy.
6. cool a little, then turn out onto a piece of sugared baking parchment.

Chocolate mousse
3 eggs
6oz dark chocolate

1. melt the chocolate in a bowl over bowling water then allow to cool until tepid.
2. Separate the eggs.
3. mix the yolks into the tepid chocolate.
4. Beak the egg whites until they form stiff peaks then fold into the chocolate mixture.

Assembly
1. Line a pudding basin or small (around 2 litre) glass bowl with aluminium foil. Sugar the foil.
2. Cut out the cake so that it lines the basin.
3. Pour the mousse into the cake.
4. Chill for at least 8 hours.
5. Turn out onto a plate and serve with strawberries and cream (or ice cream).

Nearly done for the year

Tomorrow, at 9AM, I have my last second year exam. Which really means that I should be studying, or possibly sleeping, but instead I'm watching Greek and eating my way through an M&S swiss roll.

The past week or so has been pretty awful. My ceiling has sprung a huge leak . there a crack running across it and every time it rains - which its been doing a lot more than usual this week - the rain gets inside my room too. Which has woken me up three times this week.

Look:

That aside, I've had two days when I've woken up with bad cramps, one so bad that I had to down so many painkillers I was hazy by the time I got to my exam, and couldn't get out of my room until just an hour before even then.

The exams themselves have been both ok and hellish (depending on which one). And the thing is, I usually use baking to destress, but I actually haven't had time. Until Sunday morning, when I finally had a break of more than 24 hours between two exams. So I mucked around in the kitchen and pulled together some ingredients from my cupboards and made chocolate-almond cake-biscuits.

They were originally supposed to be cupcakes. Then I relocated the ground almond and figured I'd toss some of that in. And then I made them little. And they turned out lovely and moist and intensley chocolately, and with a little bit of chocolate buttercream, and a sprinkle of icing sugar, they were lovely.




The picture's not great - the lighting in our kitchen is a bit off. But don't let it fool you.


Ingredients
2oz butter
2oz brown sugar
1oz flour
1/2 oz ground almond
1/2 oz cocoa powder
1 egg
1/2tsp baking powder

Mix the butter and sugar until soft and fluffy.
Beat in the egg.
Fold in the flour, ground almond baking powder and cocoa powder.
Spoon into cupcake pans and bake for 15 minutes at 180°C.
Ice with chocolate buttercream and sprinkle with icing sugar.