Chocolate and Hazelnut Cake

Now, this is one of the best flourless chocolate cakes that I have tried. As regular readers of this blog may have noticed, I often use ground nuts instead of flour when baking and have tested many different recipes for flourless cakes, so this is not said lightly. The method for this cake, which involves making a meringue with the egg whites and sugar, seems to stabilise the foam and gives the cake a lighter, almost delicate, texture which balances the luscious richness of chocolate and nuts. However, it is still definitely in the cake section of the brownie-to-mousse spectrum. The hazelnuts give it a deeper, nuttier flavour too, compared to cakes made only with ground almonds. I originally made it with 150g of ground hazelnuts, having misread the quantity in the recipe, and it was absolutely fine.

While the recipe requires a little bit of attention, it is not difficult – particularly if you have a stand mixer – and definitely repays the trouble. I have now made it twice – once by hand in a holiday cottage with an unknown oven – and found it pretty well behaved. The recipe is from the April Waitrose Food magazine and the author is uncredited, which is a shame as I would like to read their other recipes if this one is anything to go by.

The original quantities are for 12 people, so I have reduced it to a more manageable 8 generous portions, for which you will need a 20cm tin. If you don’t have amaretto you could probably use a tablespoon of brandy with a teaspoon of almond essence, but if you like almond cakes then a bottle of amaretto is a good investment. It is the secret ingredient in my regular almond cake and really intensifies the flavour. The amaretto cream recommended to accompany this cake is an excellent idea too, if rather indulgent.

• 160g unsalted butter
• 160g dark chocolate (70%)
• 120g roasted chopped or ground hazelnuts
• 4 large eggs
• 160g golden caster sugar
• 50g ground almonds
• 2 tbsp amaretto
• pinch of salt
• cocoa powder to dust top

• 200ml double cream
• 1 dstsp amaretto
• chopped hazelnuts to decorate (optional)

Grease and line a 20cm springform cake tin. Cut the butter into cubes and roughly chop the chocolate. Put them into a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water until they are melted. Heat the oven to 180 C/160 C Fan. If your hazelnuts are chopped (I have found ground hazelnuts in the kosher section in some supermarkets around passover) then whizz them in a food processor until they are finely ground.

Once the chocolate and butter are melted set aside to cool for 5 minutes or so. Separate the eggs and beat the the egg yolks into the chocolate mixture with a balloon whisk. Put the whites into the bowl of the stand mixer and beat to stiff peaks (you can, of course, do this by hand with a scrupulously clean balloon whisk and a lot of elbow grease). Continue to whisk at medium-high speed while you add the sugar one tablespoon at a time, making sure that each spoonful has been absorbed before you add the next. You should end up with a thick, glossy meringue.

Stir the ground hazelnuts, almonds, amaretto and a good pinch of salt into the chocolate mixture. Beat in a good dollop of meringue then carefully fold in the remainder of the meringue with a large metal spoon.

Turn into the prepared cake tin and bake for 35-40 minutes, until risen but with a little wobble in the middle. It should be dry on top and slightly coming away from the sides of the tin. Don’t test this one with a skewer or it may deflate – it will probably sink a little in the middle anyway. Sit the cake in its tin on a wire rack until it has cooled completely.

To serve, carefully unmould the cake and dust the top with cocoa powder. Whip the cream and amaretto to soft peaks and either spoon it on top, decorating with chopped hazelnuts if you wish, or just serve alongside the cake.

Now all you need is a suitable excuse to make this!

Mrs Langan’s Chocolate Pudding

I was given this recipe a very long time ago by my brother’s girlfriend, who had made it for a dinner we had together. For years I assumed that her mother was called Mrs Langan, and that it was her recipe, but a chance comment I saw on Instagram revealed that  Mrs Langan’s Chocolate Pudding actually came from the Good Food Guide Dinner Party cookbook.

The Instagram comment mentioned that her mother served it filled with pears, which I think sounds absolutely delicious. Raspberries would probably be good too, but here is the recipe as I was given it – pre-decimal, but I have given approximate metric weight conversions.

I haven’t made this for years, so no photo yet, but hope to add one soon.

• 6 large eggs
• ½lb/225g caster sugar
• 2oz/60g cocoa
• 12oz/340g dark chocolate
• ¾ pint/450ml double cream

Grease and line a 13″ x 8″ (33 x 20cm) Swiss roll tin. Preheat the oven to 175°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4.

Whip the egg yolks until they thicken. Add the sugar, and beat again until thick but not white. Add the cocoa and mix thoroughly. Whip the egg whites in a separate bowl until stiff but not dry, and fold gently into the yolk and cocoa mixture.

Pour mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 20 minutes or until it is set without being dried out. Allow the sponge to cool on a rack, then turn it out onto a sheet of greaseproof paper lightly dusted with caster sugar.

Melt the chocolate with a little water over a gentle heat. Cool the chocolate but do not allow it to set. Then pour it over the chocolate sponge base.

Whip the double cream until thick, but not stiff. Spread most of the cream evenly over the chocolate. Gently roll up or fold over the cake by moving your fingers underneath the greaseproof paper and tip onto a serving plate. Cover with the remaining cream.

 

Dark chocolate & walnut cookies

Instagram discovery number two (see previous post) has been these dangerously addictive cookies, from Ravneet Gill’s new book The Pastry Chef’s Guide, which is now top of my wish-list. She shared this recipe on Instagram live (where she is @ravneeteats) and, aside from enabling you to make these fabulous cookies, the videos show that she will surely have a TV series soon, being  as charismatic as she is talented. I have now signed up for the online pastry school that has just been launched by PUFF the bakery, run by Ravneet with fellow pastry chef Nicola Lamb, who ran very successful  pop-ups before lockdown. So expect more pastry and desserts on the blog – and that I will be two sizes bigger by the time you next see me!

These quantities make about 6 cookies and they are pretty rich so probably not wise to make a larger batch unless you are locked down with the whole family, as they are totally irresistible. However, should you be lucky enough to be with a crowd then its easy to double or triple the quantities. Apparently, this recipe also works with vegan margarine and a flax egg, though I haven’t tested this. I have taken the liberty of dialling down the quantity of sugar a bit, using soft light brown rather than caster sugar, and adding some ground almonds. You can use chopped chocolate instead of the nuts, but in my view that would be too much of a good thing – you need the crunch of the nuts to set off their glorious brownie-like squidginess.

The cookies are very straightforward to make, taking less than 30 minutes of your time (with an hour rest in the middle). So if you need a treat for tea – and who doesn’t at the moment – I heartily recommend them.

• 110g dark chocolate
• 15g butter
• 1 egg
• 60g soft light brown (or caster) sugar
• 12g cornflour
• 1 tbsp ground almonds (optional)
• 3g (1 tsp) cocoa powder
• 1g (1/3 tsp) baking powder
• 35g chopped walnuts (or roasted hazelnuts)
• pinch of Maldon salt

Bring a small pan of water to a simmer. Break the chocolate into a heatproof bowl, add the butter and set over the simmering water to melt, ensuring that the bowl doesn’t touch the water. You could also melt the chocolate and butter in a microwave, but I never do this, so can’t give advice on it. Once the chocolate is nearly melted, which shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, stir to amalgamate and put on one side.

Break the egg into a mixing bowl and beat with a whisk. Then add the sugar half at a time, whisking to incorporate after each addition. Combine the cornflour, baking powder and cocoa powder, sieving if they are lumpy. Stir in the ground almonds if you’re using.

By now the chocolate and butter should have cooled a little. Whisk them into the eggs and sugar, then whisk in the dry ingredients, at which point the batter will become quite a bit stiffer. Finally, stir in the chopped nuts (don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about the salt – that comes later). Tip the mixture into a container which will hold it in a shallow layer so it will cool down quickly and put it to rest in the fridge for an hour. I used quite a large mixing bowl, so I just spread the mixture out in that and popped it in the fridge. You can leave it in the fridge overnight (but no longer than 24 hours or you will inactivate the baking powder).

Pre-heat the oven to 160°C fan/180°C and line a baking tray with a silicone liner or piece of baking paper. Take the mixture out of the fridge and using a teaspoon, an ice cream scoop or your hands (best to use a disposable glove unless you want to end up with a lot of cookie dough on your hands; on second thoughts…) scoop out balls of the mixture, weighing them to ensure that your cookies are evenly sized. Ravneet used 50g per cookie but I made mine with 35g in the vain hope that I would eat a smaller portion. Roll each scoop into a ball then flatten it slightly and put it on the baking sheet. Pop the shaped cookies back in the fridge while the oven finishes heating.

Once the oven is up to temperature put in the cookies, which should be quite firm by now, and bake them for 8-9 minutes. At this point they should have risen and spread a little, the outside will look dry and crackled, but they will still be soft if you touch them. Take them out of the oven and crumble a little Maldon salt over each one. Leave them on the baking tray until they have firmed up, which will take at least 5 minutes. They will keep in a tin for a few days.

A perfect chocolate cake

In my book, this is a perfect chocolate cake: dense, moist, made with good dark chocolate and delectable eaten with a spoonful of whipped or clotted cream. As a child I would have preferred Felicity Cloake’s perfect chocolate cake, with its fluffier crumb and chocolate buttercream filling; no doubt my nieces and nephews would agree.  However, these days I find buttercream too sweet and sickly, preferring my cake unadorned, not too sweet and tasting of dark chocolate rather than cocoa.

I have been making this chocolate cake since 1983 when I acquired Arabella Boxer’s The Sunday Times Complete Cook Book. It became my bible, back before Nigel Slater, Nigella and Ottolenghi had started publishing, let alone entered my kitchen bookshelves. I have found Boxer’s recipes to be reliable and in impeccable taste, though somewhat more formal and classically English or French than much of the food I cook now. It is structured as a cookery course, with sections on different techniques such as braising or grilling. The section on menus for different occasions – with contributions from other cooks such as Antonio Carluccio and Claudio Roden (though Boxer’s own suggestions are generally more practical) – is particularly useful for a cook still learning to entertain. The book is now available very cheaply online, so treat yourself.

The simplicity of the method mean that this chocolate cake can be produced within an hour or so and uses ingredients that are probably in your cupboard (or definitely available in the corner store). You do not need beaters to cream the mixture, nor to remember a complicated list of ingredients. I have adapted the quantities to fit my tin and slightly reduce the proportion of eggs, also making it a very easy recipe to remember. It will work in any shape tin, or foil container, of the right size and I have made it successfully with all sorts of dark chocolate from corner-shop Bournville to posh 85% chocolate. It will keep for a couple of days in the tin wrapped in foil, if you have that sort of willpower, and will survive being transported like that for a picnic. So it’s a very handy recipe to have up your sleeve for cooking on holiday or when you have unexpected guests for tea.

Enough chat: here’s how to make 8 portions of chocolate happiness.

100g dark chocolate
100g unsalted butter
2 eggs
150g caster sugar
pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
100g plain flour (or 70/30 flour and ground almonds)
whipped cream to serve

Break up the chocolate and put in a heatproof bowl over a pan of just simmering water, with the unsalted butter cut into cubes. Allow them to melt together then stir and take off the heat as soon as the mixture is smooth. Leave to cool – Boxer says for an hour, but I’ve never been organised enough to leave it for that long, and it has always worked fine.

Set the oven to heat to 175 C/Gas Mark 4. Grease and line the base of an 18cm cake tin or similar. Beat the eggs in a bowl and beat in the sugar, salt and vanilla extract (if using – Boxer doesn’t). Stir in the melted chocolate mixture, then fold in the flour lightly but thoroughly. If you want to gild the lily, and you have some ground almonds, then you can use a mixture of flour and almonds, which makes it a little more dense and moist.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and spread evenly. Bake for about 35 minutes, until the cake springs back when pressed, and is starting to come away from the sides. If you test it, the centre should still be moist.

Leave to cool in the tin. Serve in slices or squares with whipped cream, and berries if you wish. If you want to serve a chocolate cake for dessert, I think Lucy Boyd’s Chocolate and Almond Cake is a better candidate, whereas this is the perfect chocolate cake for morning coffee or afternoon tea.

 

Chocolate pudding with pears poached in wine

The first time I read this recipe, from La Bretagne Gourmande by Nathalie Beauvais, I was not at all sure about it. A chocolate pudding that included squash? Pears in red wine with chocolate pudding? However, I was sufficiently intrigued to make it, and very good it was too – lighter than many chocolate puddings and the pears worked really well with it. And, of course, you can have fun getting people to guess what it’s made of!

You can also replace the squash with chestnuts to make a chocolate chestnut pudding, which is apparently denser, but I suspect it would be just as delicious, if not more so. Serves at least 6 (depending on whether you want to serve half or a whole pear each – there is a generous quantity of pudding).

500g patidoux squash (I used butternut)
200g dark chocolate
100g butter
2 sheets gelatine

6 pears
750ml red wine
150g sugar
a piece of orange zest
1 vanilla pod
½ tsp cinnamon
6 peppercorns
2 cloves
50ml crème de cassis

The pudding needs to be made at least 4 hours ahead. Peel the squash and cut it into large pieces – if you’re using a whole small squash you can just quarter it – and remove the seeds. Cook it in a steamer for 20-30 minutes until it is completely tender.

Soak the gelatine leaves in a little cold water in a shallow dish. Break up the chocolate and melt it with the butter in a bowl over a pan of just simmering water or in the microwave. Beat the cooked squash with the sugar until smooth. Mix this purée into the melted chocolate  and beat well. Drain the gelatine and add it, mixing well again. Turn the pudding into a bowl and put in the fridge to set.

Put the wine, sugar, orange rind and spices into a large shallow pan with a lid. The original recipe suggests a Beaujolais type, but in my household it would be whatever wine is to hand, and I used less than the litre specified. Cover, bring to the boil and leave to simmer gently for 15 minutes.

Peel the pears, cut them in half and remove the core – I find it easiest to do this by scooping the core out with a teaspoon. Slide them into the wine, cover and simmer gently for 20 minutes until they are tender to the point of a knife. Add the crème de cassis. Transfer the pears to a dish, strain the liquid to remove the spices and pour the wine over the pears, adding the vanilla pod back into the bowl. Allow to cool and then put in the fridge.

To serve, use a soup spoon to put a large scoop of chocolate fondant on a dessert plate, and add a pear, elegantly sliced, alongside with a little of the wine. Initially, I assumed that it would need some crème fraîche, but it is actually fine just as it is. An unusual dessert that is a bit special, but not at all difficult, and not too wicked, either.

Sweet potato brownies

It is spring, so the urge to make comfort food is diminishing, but it’s still cold enough that I feel like having something sweet with my tea, especially when I’ve been gardening out on the terrace.

I needed to roast some sweet potato for another dish, and remembered having seen a recipe for sweet potato brownies, and thinking that it sounded worth trying.  Deliciously Ella has a very healthy-sounding one, which uses raw cacao and dates, but a Dan Lepard recipe also came up on my search, and as I had all the ingredients to hand, that’s the one I tried.

I used walnuts rather than pecans the first time I made it (but pecans are also delicious), replaced much of the flour with ground almonds and halved the quantities to suit my favourite 15cm springform cake tin, which is the ideal size if you’re only cooking for one or two people. If you have more mouths to feed then double quantities fit an 18cm square baking tin.

50g unsalted butter
100g dark chocolate, finely chopped
100g baked sweet potato, flesh scooped out
60g light brown sugar (or 30g sugar & 30g xylitol)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
20g plain flour
30g ground almonds
scant ¼ tsp baking powder
50g chopped walnuts (or pecans or hazelnuts…)

I had baked the sweet potato whole at 200ºC until it was tender – it took about 30 minutes but this will obviously vary with the size of the potato. I used it when it was still warm with no ill effects.

For the brownies, heat the oven to 160ºC Fan/180ºC/Gas Mark 4 and line your tin with greaseproof or foil. My oven has both fan and radiant options, and I find the fan oven particularly good for baking like this.

Melt the butter in a sauce pan, add 60g of the chocolate and stir until it has also melted. In a bowl, beat the sweet potato flesh with the brown sugar until almost smooth, then add the butter and chocolate. Beat the egg, and add to the bowl with the vanilla, beating until the mixture is thick. Stir in the flour, ground almonds and baking powder until evenly combined. Finally, fold in the chopped chocolate and nuts.

Spoon in to the tin (this quantity also fits the oblong tin above, which is 19 x 13 cm), smooth the top and bake for about 20-25 minutes until just cooked but a little soft under the crust. Leave to cool completely in the tin before slicing. The addition of almonds makes this brownie particularly dense and delicious – and the sweet potato means that it is (slightly) less indulgent than the traditional sugar-laden version.

Chocolate and Almond Cake

Serve slightly warm for pudding, with creme fraiche or double cream. Raspberries also go well. Lucy Boyd recipe, and the best chocolate and almond cake I have tried. Full quantities are enough for 8 or 10, in a shallow 20cm cake tin with a removable base; half quantities perfect for 4 (or even 6), in a 15cm tin.

85g unsalted butter, plus extra to grease the tin
tbsp plain flour, to dust the tin (use rice flour to b gluten free)
120g dark chocolate
4 medium eggs, separated
85g caster sugar
85g ground almonds

Preheat the oven to 200ºC/180ºC Fan/Gas 6. Grease the tin with a little butter, then dust with flour, turning the tin to coat and tapping out any excess.

Put the chocolate with the butter into a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water (making sure there is no contact between the bottom of the bowl and the water) and stir until smooth, then take off the heat and allow to cool.

Beat the egg yolks together with the caster sugar until creamy and you can write your initial. Combine the cooled chocolate with the sugar and yolks and stir in the ground almonds.

Whisk the egg whites to form soft peaks, then fold into the chocolate and almond mixture. Pour into the prepared cake tin and cook for 25-30 minutes until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin before turning out.

You can make a chocolate icing (though I never do) by melting 90g dark chocolate with 30g butter in a heatproof bowl, stir until smooth then sift in 25g icing sugar with 1 tbsp water (or more if necessary). Leave to cool before spreading over the cake.