Sometimes Food - Flourless Chocolate Cake with Hazelnut Meringue

One of my favourite lady friends just celebrated her 23rd birthday, and to ring in the beginning of her 24th year I baked her this delightfully girly cake. This recipe is perhaps a little complicated, and unless you have biceps like Agatha Trunchbull you will definitely need an electric beater, but it tastes divine and preparing it makes for an enjoyable afternoon of very busy baking! Don your favourite frilly apron (I rather like this one) and get cooking, your favourite lady friend will thank you!

My super cute new electric beater, you will need one of these!

Flourless Chocolate Cake with Hazelnut Meringue & Raspberries

What you will need:

• 2/3 cup softened unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 6 eggs, separated
• 350g good quality bitter dark chocolate (I used the 60% cocoa variety)
• 1 tsp vanilla essence

For the meringue:

• 4 egg whites
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• Pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup roasted hazelnuts, chopped (see here for how to prepare them)
• 1/4 cup chopped dark chocolate
• Fresh raspberries and thickened cream to serve

What you will need to do:

1. Preheat your oven to 180 C and line the bottom of a 20cm spring form cake tin with baking paper. Grease the sides of the cake tin and set aside.

2. Cream brown sugar and butter in a large mixing bowl until the mixture is pale and creamy. In a separate bowl melt the dark chocolate, I always melt chocolate using this method.

3. Using an electric mixer, add egg yolks to the butter / sugar mixture one at a time and beat gently until all ingredients are combined. Add melted chocolate and vanilla essence and beat well. Your batter should be like a thick chocolate mousse in texture.

4. This is where things get a little bit tricky. In yet another bowl, beat six egg whites until they begin to stiffen and form soft peaks. Make sure your bowl and beaters are clean and dry before commencing this step, any unwanted moisture will spoil your eggs! Stir about a third of the egg whites through the cake batter - you can stir this first third through the mixture quite vigorously - then carefully fold through the remaining egg whites. Be sure to fold the whites thorough gently, otherwise your cake mixture will separate and become slippery and sloppy rather than creamy. I would suggest using a spatula at this step, and try to fold the cake batter over itself rather than stirring it in a circular motion, folding is preferable to stirring as it retains the air in the eggs.

5. Pour the mixture into your greased cake tin and bake for approximately half an hour. Meanwhile, prepare your meringue. (More egg whites!) Beat four egg whites, cream of tartar, and salt until eggs begin to stiffen and form peaks, then carefully add the white sugar a little bit at a time, continue to beat until the mixture stiffens up. Your meringue mixture is ready when you can turn your mixing bowl upside down without the whites falling out. Once the whites are at this point, fold through chopped hazelnuts and chocolate. As above, I would suggest using a spatula, and fold the mixture as little as possible.

6. After about half an hour in the oven your cake should be firming up nicely, a little bit of a jiggle is ok, but make sure your cake has begun to cook through before beginning this next step. Remove your cake from the oven and spread the meringue mixture over the top of the cake. I spread my meringue mixture with a spatula and then used a fork to create some cute little swirly peaks. Return the cake to the oven and cook for a further 30 minutes, or until the meringue has hardened and is browning slightly.

7. Remove your cake from the oven and stand aside for at least half an hour before removing from the tin. Don't be alarmed if your meringue has puffed up - my cake looked like it was wearing a meringue chef's hat when it first came out of the oven - but never fear! After thirty minutes cooling your meringue should have fallen a bit. Run a knife around the edge of the cake tin to loosen the cake before turning it out. Allow the cake to cool before serving.

I served my cake with blobs of thickened cream and fresh raspberries. You can top your cake with whatever you like, but I would recommend something tart to cut through the richness of the chocolate and the sugary meringue. I must also point out that this cake is incredibly unhealthy! It is high in sugar, high in fat, and presumalby bad for one's cholesterol. In the words of the immortal Cookie Monster, this cake is a sometimes food. Still, doesn't it look lovely?

PS. Happy Birthday Sarah! I'm glad you liked your cake, now take Cookie Monster's advice and eat some healthy greens...

The Best Birthday Cake

About two weeks ago my little brother celebrated his first birthday, and as such I had the pleasure of heading home to Canberra to attend his very first birthday party.  The party was held on a lovely Saturday afternoon, there were balloons, presents, lollies for all, and glasses of champagne on offer for the older guests too. The younger attendees enjoyed a few giddy hours playing in the backyard with a bubble machine, while the grown ups enjoyed a very civilised afternoon tea and a relaxing drink in the sun. Birthday Boy had a fantastic day (despite being completely unaware that all of the excitement was in his honour) and I spent the day in awe of my talented little brother's new and exciting abilities. He stands up all on his own now, babbles away in a most conversational manner, and to my sheer amazement offers to share his food! Bless his little heart.

The event was a great success, in part due to my Stepmum's seemingly innate skill for entertaining, and in part due to the inaugural First Birthday Cake, prepared by my Dad. Dad is a fantastic cook, and his roast dinners, freshly caught fish, pastas and delicious deserts have fostered my love of food for as long as I can remember. Birthday Boy's cake was up to his usual standard (and absolutely huge - the photos don't do it justice!) and I'm going to share the recipe with you here. It is adapted from a Jamie Oliver recipe that I *think* can be found in his first book, The Naked Chef. I haven't been able to find it online so I reproduce it for you here:

What you will need:

• 200g caster sugar
• 200g butter
• 200g flour
• 4 tablespoons cocoa
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup slivered almonds

For the filling:

• 200ml whipped cream
  
• Fruit jam or fresh berries if desired

What you will need to do:

1. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, flour, baking powder and cocoa and beat with an electric mixer until the batter is smooth. Finally, stir through the slivered almonds.

2. Divide the mixture evenly across two 20cm spring form cake tins and bake for approximately 20 minutes.

3. Remove the cakes from oven, allow to cool completely before removing them from cake tins. Cover one cake with whipped cream and any jam or fruits that you would like to include, then carefully place the second cake on top of the first. Refrigerate the lot for at least half an hour before icing.

Apparently the original Jamie recipe calls for a runny chocolate drizzle icing. Given that many of the attendees at this particular party were under the age of three and likely to make a mess, Dad opted for a creamy dark chocolate icing that didn't so much drizzle as meld to the cake like delicious chocolate cement. I could wax lyrical about how marvellous the cake tasted, but I think the demolition-style 'after' shot speaks for itself...

Children's birthday parties always stir in me a strange sense of melancholy. A nostalgia for barely remembered parties of the past perhaps, or maybe I'm just so hopelessly emotional that any sort of happy family moment makes me feel a little weepy. Which leads me to my musical segue for this post. Listen to these girls, they are sisters - sixteen and eighteen years old - and they are divine. Melancholy, naive, and with adorable Jens Lekman-esque accents that seem somehow at odds with their startlingly strong voices. This is the second post in a row where I've featured them -I'm ever so slightly besotted, and I think everyone should rush out and buy their new EP: Drunken Trees. First Aid Kit have stolen my heart.

First Aid Kit - In Our Own Pretty Way

First Aid Kit on Last.fm

My Blueberry Boat (muffins)

Breakfast is probably my favourite meal of the day.

Morning is probably my least favourite time of day. Wake me up in the morning and I have been known to yell, throw things, tell you your mother would be disappointed in you, and later have no memory of the event. Suffice to say I am not a happy lassie before noon. So often it is with confusion and despair that I stare into the fridge of a morning, wanting something delicious but lacking the mental faculties and emotional fortitude to choose.

We once hypothesised a ‘What Should Tara Have for Breakfast’ website, where people could make these decisions for me. I still dream of it longingly.

Fresh, tasty, and easy – these are my breakfast requirements. I love eggs, but breakfast must be quick, otherwise more often than not I will choose a delicious cooked breakfast over a 9am lecture. For the weekday rush, these blueberry muffins are a real treat.

What You Will Need

1 1/2 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
A little bit less than 3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
80 ml milk
80 ml vegetable oil
1 - 2 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen)

For the topping:

1 tbsp butter
3 tbs white sugar
2 tbs flour
2 tsp ground cinnamon


What You Will Need to Do

• Preheat your oven to 200 degrees C. Line muffin tin with...muffin liners? Patty tins? You know what I mean! I got ten muffins from this batch.

• Sift flour and baking powder together, mix with sugar.

• Combine egg and oil in a cup measure, top up with milk to make it one cup (roughly 80 mls).

• Before you mix wet and dry ingredients, it's time to make your topping. Rub together butter, flour, sugar and cinnamon until crumbly. You might have to tweak the proportions slightly - I always do.
  

• Mix wet and dry ingredients together - gently. Fold in blueberries. Do *not* over mix - your muffins will be tough! No one likes tough muffins! Unless it's a euphemism for sassy old ladies.
  

• Fill the muffin cups, and top with crumbly sugar mix.

• Place in oven, cook for around 20 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
  

• Enjoy early Monday morning with a strong cup of coffee and the following tracks on the headphones:

Blueberry Boat – The Fiery Furnaces
TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me
Animal Collective - The Purple Bottle (one of my favourite songs ever, and perfect for that bus/car/bike ride to work)

Australian Summer - Raspberry & Peach Upside Down Cake

Hello dear readers!

Welcome to my first post as authoress of our new-born blog. If you have found your way to our little corner of the internet, then welcome. I hope you enjoy what we have to offer.

As I am sure you have noticed, summer has well and truly descended upon those of us residing below the equator. Until this week, Melbourne had sparingly kept her temperatures below the 30 degree mark, but the mercury is rising now, and for me this rise in temperature outside usually coincides with a rise in the amount of time I spend inside, sitting in front of a fan with a cold glass of water in one hand and a good book in the other.

Recently however, some friends and I spent a sunny Monday afternoon in the foothills of the Dandenong's going berry picking. Now not much can tempt me away from my glorious air conditioning in the throes of an unforgiving summer, but there is one thing I'd just about walk across hot coals for, and that is fresh picked raspberries, so five of us hopped on a train and headed out to lovely Kallista (nestled between townships such as Sassafrass, Tecoma, and Ferntree Gully) where we enjoyed scenery such as this:

Ate berries as fresh as this:

And paid a meagre sum of just $10 to be able to leave the orchard with a kilo of berries each, not to mention another odd kilo in each of our stomachs (and all over our faces, as my sister pointed out when we went to have our harvest weighed...) Anyway, as of this evening a hefty portion of the raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries that I picked with my own two hands remain in my freezer, which is why my first ever posted recipe is a lovely berry upside down cake. I know it's hot, but turn your oven on for this one, it's worth it.

What you will need:

120 grams of raspberries (plus any other berry varieties you enjoy)

Two large peaches, sliced

Two tablespoons of butter or margarine

Two tablespoons of honey

125 grams butter

1 cup caster sugar

Vanilla essence

2 free range eggs

1 ¼ cups self raising flour

½ cup almond meal

1 cup milk

What you will need to do:

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Line the bottom of a 20cm spring form cake tin with baking paper, grease up the sides with a little extra butter.

Microwave tablespoons of butter and honey until they are melted and bubbling a little, then pour the mixture into cake tin and spread across the baking paper.

Arrange fruit on top of the honey mix. No need to be neat about it, although if your berries are particularly juicy I'd recommend draining them of a bit of their liquid, or else your cake tin might leak berry juice, and you'll have to scrape the resulting burnt on jam stuff off the base of your oven. (I've done this, it's not fun.)

Next, cream butter, sugar, and vanilla essence in a bowl. If you are partial to lemon then substitute the vanilla essence for the rind of a small lemon. Either option is delicious.

Beat in the eggs, then add all remaining ingredients and beat until batter is smooth. Don't worry if your cake mix seems thick, it's meant to be.

Pour batter into cake tin, then bang cake tin gently to make sure the batter seeps between the fruit, holding everything together nicely.

Cook for 40 minutes to an hour. I always rely on the good ol' 'cake is done when knife inserted into the centre comes out clean' chestnut, as oven temperatures vary.

Now the final step in the process can be a little problematic if you are impatient like myself. Make sure you leave your cake to cool properly before trying to turn it out, or else half your fruit might slide off, ruining the nice upside-down effect (the cake will still taste delicious though, I promise.)

Remove the spring form sides to the cake tin, place an upside down plate on top of the cake, and carefully turn the whole lot upside down (or right way up, depending on how you look at it) then remove the base of your tin and peel off the baking paper carefully. Voila!

Cake is best enjoyed with a little of this on the side:

Listen to: Australia (The Shins, Wincing The Night Away)