December + Chocolate Oat Cookies

It’s nearly Christmas which in a strange contradictory way feels like it should come as a great shock, as in “good grief, what happened to November, or the rest of the year for that matter?”, but at the same time I feel I can wave my hand nonchalantly and say Christmas schmistmas (try saying that out loud, difficult.) Not because I don’t care and not because I don’t crave more than anything a day or two to spend with family and friends eating and drinking, but because when it all boils down, that’s really all we need to worry about in our house – the food and the wine.

In November blog readers around the world were inundated with Thanksgiving recipes and stories and photographs of turkey. Most writers spoke of the comfort that can be found in having the traditional Thanksgiving menu year after year, while other writers posted recipes for the new and the different. After several weeks of pumpkin pie recipes and cranberry sauce and tales of gathering at the family table I had had enough. If I read another turkey stuffing recipe or ideas for how to use the leftovers I might have screamed. My animosity towards Thanksgiving might very well stem from jealousy, I’ll be the first to admit it. I would love another holiday so close to Christmas, another opportunity to cook and eat with the people I love, but I must wait to Christmas here.

So I became eager and excited for the days when our family could plan our Christmas meal. We usually try new things, experiment with new flavours. There are special ingredients, like scallops, that we save for days like Christmas but otherwise the wonderful thing about our Christmas table is the food doesn’t seem too far from our everyday. This makes our Christmas menu sound a bit boring, perhaps? As if quick week night meals were on par with our Christmas fare. The difference between the everyday and Christmas is time – we have all day to prepare our meal. We spend the day pottering and tinkering about in the kitchen, occasionally taking breaks to eat chocolates, pour more bubbles, open presents or lounge in the sun (the joys of a southern hemisphere Christmas). Then, suddenly it’s 2 in the afternoon and our table is full.

I love the rituals of our Christmas, the unstated guidelines our family has about how long to spend in your pyjamas in the morning, how we set the table, the bowls of chocolates or roasted nuts for people to pick at during the day and the annual trip to Kirk’s Christmas shop to choose our decoration. This reflection on Thanksgiving and Christmas, family and food, prompted me to think of my family’s favourite recipes – the ones held constant throughout my life. There are quite a few on this list but whether they were held constant in the reality of my childhood or whether I have fabricated their near perpetual existence in my memory, as I am prone to doing, I cannot say. But they are good and I hope to share them all here, one day. First though is the chocolate oat cookie, revered in Lowe family lore.

All four of us have made this recipe countless times and nearly every time the cookies have turned out differently. Someone may have added too much butter and the biscuits become flat crisps. Other times perhaps the butter and sugar were not creamed properly, or maybe a smidge too much baking powder and we have high, fluffy, scone like biscuits. Every time these biscuits have been good, perhaps made in haste but never without love. These inconsistencies are not a fault of the recipe, instead they are testament that with chocolate, oats and butter there is not a lot that can go wrong.

Sometimes these biscuits have been made with chocolate chips, other times with a roughly chopped block of dark chocolate. A few times we have abandoned the chocolate altogether and used raisins instead. These days roughly chopped Whittaker’s dark chocolate is the way to go; the hunks of chocolate are molten fresh from the oven but hold their shape within a thin seal ready to burst into warm fudge as you bite through. The binding flavour here, what differentiates this cookie from a regular chocolate chip, is not the chocolate used, or the (significant) quantity of butter, or the addition of sweetened condensed milk, but the oats. That nutty, soft flavour I find irresistible in so many things seems to bring me home every time I eat them. Chocolate oat cookies did that perhaps, and for that I am thankful.

Chocolate Oat Cookie

Once you’ve added the flour and the rolled oats, the ratio of dry to wet ingredients seems a bit out and the mixture too dry. Work it well with your hands or a really large spoon and all will be ok.

250 grams butter
3 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk
3/4 cup sugar
1 and 1/2 cups flour
1 and 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking powder
150 grams roughly chopped dark chocolate

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Line a baking tray. Cream the butter, condensed milk and sugar together for at least 8 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Cook for 15-20 minutes until a nice golden brown.

Chocolate Berry Torte

September has brought clear days of high winds, the sort of wind that seems to be rolling and sweeping in the air above us, almost unnoticed, but will take you by surprise with the flick of a tree branch or the lift of a hat. See the blossom, dusky pink, before it is blown off the trees.

There have been mild days with warmth in the sun. There has been a grey wet day, a freezing cold day, a torrential rain day. It’s only day 7 of September. Welcome to Spring in Wellington.
This chocolate berry torte is rich, dense and the chocolate sits squarely in the front row, so to speak. It is perhaps more appropriate to dark winter nights, maybe in front of a fire, with a glass of dessert wine or a citrus-y bourbon. But here we have it in Spring and I’m sure you won’t complain.
Like I said this torte is rich, dense and deliciously fudgey. It’s brownie meets ganache truffle. The sort of cake where you take a bite, smile in delight at how good it is, and you may very well have chocolate on your teeth. Every second spoonful or so there is a berry tartness, a smash of raspberry or blackberry or blueberry. It adds a freshness to the cake, but not a lot of sweet. The bitter-sweet of the chocolate is the leading flavour here.
This cake is gluten free, taken from the same book as this recipe. I’ve realised that in our house we often make gluten free desserts not because we fool ourselves that they are healthier, or because we are dangerously gluten intolerant, but because the understated disc of a cake that these recipes produce suit us perfectly. They are clean and simple to look at, nothing much really, but the flavours, whether citrus or chocolate, hold their own.

Chocolate Berry Torte

Any berries would be fine in this cake, fresh or frozen. We used frozen mixed berries which lend a bumpy texture and add more colour.

200 grams dark chocolate
50 grams butter
3 eggs, separated
50 grams caster sugar
50ml cream
110 ground almonds plus extra for dusting tin
150-200 grams berries

20cm spring form tin

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.

Line the base of the tin with baking paper and brush the sides with melted butter. Dust with ground almonds.

Place the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water, until melted and smooth.

In a large bowl beat the egg yolks with the sugar until pale and creamy. Add the chocolate mixture to the egg yolks and mix well to combine. Stir in the cream and ground almonds.

In another bowl beat the egg whites until stiff. Gently fold the egg whites, a third at a time, into the chocolate almond mixture. Next fold through the berries. Pour into the prepared tin.

Bake in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes. The sides should be cooked but the centre slightly underdone. Leave the cake to cool completely before removing from tin.

Dust with icing sugar and serve with whipped cream and more berries.

Chocolate Espresso Biscuits

At the start of June I happened to flick over to the Kitchen Maid for a blog reading fix (her blog posts are short and sweet, ideal for a quick hit), when I saw the special ingredient for this month’s We Should Cocoa Challenge: coffee. Oh lordy may, I thought, chocolate and coffee, my two favourite things.

When it’s been a long day, or I feel the start of caffeine withdrawal shakes coming on, I buy a coffee and a Santé bar; I take my coffee black and my chocolate near abouts. I use the chocolate like a spoon, swirling it through the coffee, then licking the melted coffee-chocolate, feeling the rose creep back into my cheeks. It’s a dangerous way to live.

Then, just last weekend, I happened to be flicking through Julie Le Clerc’s Simple Café Food, looking for something else entirely, when I saw a recipe for Turkish Velvet Biscuits, with the sub-title “coffee, coffee and more coffee”. Oh lordy may, I thought, here we go!

These biscuits fill the kitchen with the scent of coffee. Take a pinch of the mixture and there is sweetness and a bit of spice, and then, the deep bitter flavour of coffee hits you. Despite using ground coffee in the dough, and then being rolled in ground coffee and sugar before baking, the texture is quite lovely. Yes, there is a bit of a grainy quality, but in the best possible sense. The coffee sugar creates a crisp outside with a sort of airy softness in the middle.

These biscuits fall in the same camp as biscotti for me. They aren’t overly sweet, ideally served with coffee (funny, that), and would even be nice with a coffee flavoured or cream based liqueur. I’m thinking they would be an excellent match for coffee, chocolate, or perhaps maple ice cream.

Turkish Velvet Biscuits
Barely adapted from Julie Le Clerc’s recipe

The chocolate here may seem like a bit of an after-thought, but the coffee is the shining star. I think you could possibly switch out the measure of ground coffee in the mix for an equal measure of cocoa for more of a mocha flavour.

2 tablespoons finely ground coffee
1/2 cup caster sugar
150 grams butter, softened
1 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup finely ground coffee
1 egg
1 tablespoon strong espresso
1/2 teaspoon ground all spice
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups plain flour, sifted
50 grams dark chocolate
small knob of butter

Preheat oven to 180°C and line a baking tray.
In a small bowl mix the first measure of ground coffee with the first measure of sugar and set aside.
In a bowl cream the butter with the sugar. Beat in the second measure of ground coffee, egg, espresso, all spice and baking soda. Stir through the flour until just incorporated.
Form into walnut sized balls and then roll through the coffee-sugar and place biscuits on baking tray.
Bake for 10 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

In a microwave proof bowl melt the chocolate with the butter. Once the biscuits have cooled, drizzle chocolate over biscuits.

Makes 20-30 biscuits depending on size.

Walnut and Chocolate Biscotti

Saturday night and I was feeling like a thick, fudgey, dense chocolate something. Maybe with fruit and nuts, maybe a little like panforte. Instead, I made biscotti, which has been on my to-make list all summer. When, finally, biscotti and I are on the same page, so to speak, summer has well and truly passed. We have been hit by what the weather reporters are calling a “weather bomb.” Power is down and rooves are being ripped off in some parts of the country. Here in Wellington it’s miserable and bleak: driving rain and furious winds.

A piece of biscotti to be enjoyed with a small glass of sherry later on, when it’s dark, and all I can hear are the winds beating the trees and the steady drip of rain in the pipes ouside.

 Chocolate and walnut biscotti
Recipe adapted from here and here

2 cups standard flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
60 grams butter, cubed
3/4 cup sugar, raw or white, I used raw demerara sugar
1/2 cup roughly broken walnut pieces
50 grams roughly chopped dark chocolate, I used Lindt Orange Intense
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla essence

Pre-heat oven to 160°. Stir flour and baking powder together in a large bowl. Use your fingertips to rub in the butter until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir through sugar, walnut pieces and chocolate. If you wish, add a small amount orange zest at this point.
Make a well in the centre and pour in the lightly beaten eggs and the vanilla essence. Stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture forms thick dough. (I had to add a dash of milk at this point..)

Place dough on a lightly floured surface and give it a quick knead. Divde dough in two and roll each half into a flat-ish log about 5cm wide. Place on a lined baking tray and bake for 35 minutes or until golden brown and cooked through.

Remove from oven and allow to cool completely. Heat oven to 170°. Slice each piece of biscotti diagonally to about 1cm thick. Place slices back on baking tray and into the oven for 10 minutes or until slightly browned but quite crisp to the touch.

Serve with sherry(!) or with espresso coffee, maybe combine the two, espresso with a shot of sherry. Biscotti would also be a good vehicle for delivering vanilla ice cream, or perhaps salted butter caramel ice cream, to your lips.

This recipe is begging to be adapted: swap the walnuts for almonds, or macadamias, increase the quantity. Remove the nut or the chocolate altogether and add a good handful of roughly chopped dried figs instead. Reduce the flour quantity a little and make it up with some cocoa. Experiment with the sugars, perhaps a decent tablespoon of maple syrup or a half cup of brown sugar for something a little bit richer and caramely. Add a citrus hit with chopped candied peel and a smattering of orange zest. Swap half the flour out for a cup of ground almonds to really bring forth the soft almond bitterness.

Baci di Dama

When my sister first moved to Central Otago to begin her summer working on Felton Road vineyard she had no idea what to expect, and neither did we. We were not familiar with the environment: we did not know the roads she would be driving, or the house she would be living in, or the spectacular scenery she would be surrounded by at the vineyard. From Wellington we could only remind her to wear sunscreen and make sure she was eating something other than toast.

Georgie made these biscuits during her first few weeks of work to take to the vineyard and share with the other workers. I thought it was a good sign she was baking for other people rather than to comfort herself in moments of anxious self doubt and homesickness with half a dozen biscuits.

Last week Georgie was home and my family spent the week cooking and eating and drinking together. It was a good week. Georgie and I made Baci di dama on Monday evening while Mum cooked a piece of aged sirloin (aged sirloin on a Monday night!!). We drank bubbles, ate cheese and Dad conducted a little wine tasting. These biscuits are very easy to make and I imagine they would be more so without all the distractions of wine tasting and bubbly drinking and cheese eating.

Baci di dama means lady kisses in Italian. Eating these biscuits, though, I would liken them more to a tenderly spiky kiss from a softly bearded gentlemen. They are not the sort of satin pillow softness of, say, a mother’s kiss, but they do have a delicate crumb and crunch to them. Ground almond adds a more interesting note than a normal yo-yo biscuit, the sort made with mostly butter and icing sugar.

When you make these biscuits, wherever you are in the world, whoever you are with, bearded gentlemen or little ladies, know that they will be enjoyed by all.

Baci di Dama
These biscuits can be sandwiched together with chocolate or Nutella. I think an almond butter cream could be nice also.

100grams butter
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 cup ground almonds
3/4 cup flour

Chocolate filling:
100grams chocolate
2 tablespoons butter

Preheat oven to 180°C and line a baking tray with baking paper.
Beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy.
Stir in the flour and ground almonds until a stiff dough. (Initially the mixture might look like bread crumbs, just keep working it quickly until smooth).
Form walnut sized balls and place in the oven for 12-15 minutes or until golden.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a heat proof bowl over simmering water. Allow to cool and thicken. Once biscuits and chocolate have cooled, sandwich biscuits together with chocolate mix, or filling of your choice.

Thank you for the photos and recipe Georgie, x.

Ce n’est pas la glace au chocolat…

Chocolate flavoured whipped cream doesn’t sound too bad, does it? But what if I say that this chocolate whipped cream is frozen and somehow meant to be ice cream.

The process of making this imposter ice cream is quite lovely. It feels like you are doing something good, something exciting. With the heart-stopping quantities of cream required it surely is going to be the most lush of desserts, you think to yourself. Firstly, you whip the cream until quite thick – “slovenly folds” as Nigel Slater wrote. Then mix through some icing sugar and a drop or two of vanilla essence. You place the cream in a shallow container in the freezer for 30 minutes or until a sort of thin, icy crust begins to form at the edges.

Meanwhile, melt chunks of chocolate with a slosh more cream in a bain-marie. Once glistening and luxuriously smooth, let cool. Remove the cream from the freezer and place in a bowl, add the chocolate. Begin to fold through; rich dark streaks swirling through the white. Until they swirl no more. The cold cream has in fact hardened the chocolate into grainy, pebbley bits. You must smash through the mix with a fork. Return the chocolate cream to the freezer for a few hours. At this point I had a few doubts.

It almost resembles chocolate covered dirt...

Eating the frozen chocolate cream is what I imagine eating cold sand could be like. Your spoon seems to ricochet off the many minuscule ice shards. It does not delicately curl the contours of your spoon, nor does it tenderly roll through the contours of your mouth. The fine grains of hard chocolate and the tangy taste of cream and the bitterness of dark chocolate jar and clash. It is not the sort of cream to hold on your tongue and allow the flavours to introduce themselves, like the freshness of raspberry or lemon ice cream, or the pleasing familarity of vanilla or strawberry. Instead, you are left with the kind of discomfort that comes from too much chocolate and cream, a head or a stomach discomfort I can never be sure, but either way, you need a lie down.

I had grand ideas for this post. I was going to write about the day I bought this little book for €5 from a stationary shop in Annecy, France. I was going to begin with a description of the weather – a clear and crisp day in late January, how we were wrapped up in hats, scarves, gloves and coats. I would have told you that my friend Ivan and I spent the day walking around the lake ripping off pieces of baguette and eating ham and Swiss gruyère from their paper wrappings. And that we had crêpes for afternoon tea with caramelised bananas, chocolate ice cream and chocolate sauce.

Afterwards we walked into the stationary shop and I probably picked up and put back down this petit livre several times. It is called Desserts with the sub title, trop bons. It all looks trop bons too; almond and pear tart, apple and red fruit torte, pears stuffed with figs and then wrapped in pastry, a red rice and sauteed grape risotto, apricot soufflé, tiramisu made with white chocolate and raspberries, peaches poached in Marsala, honey and banana ice cream and yoghurt and pistachio semifreddo. I could make it all.

And yet, of all the desserts, page 172 was selected: glace au chocolat. This post is my entry into the One Year Anniversary of Belleau Kitchen’s Random Recipe Challenge, even though the recipe, or my execution of it, needs some serious work.

Glace au chocolat
Original recipe in French, translated par moi

I am wondering if mixing through the chocolate before freezing would have produced better results.

300ml cream
2 tablespoons milk
50g icing sugar, sifted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
125g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
2 tablespoons cream

Beat the cream and the milk until thick- not so much that peaks form but just softly whipped. Incorporate the icing sugar and the vanilla extract. Pour the mixture into a shallow container and place for 30 minutes in the freezer, until the ice begins to take the outer edges.

Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie with the second measure of cream. Heat until the mixture is combined then let cool.

Remove the ice cream from the freezer and pour the cream into a bowl. Incorporate the chocolate and work énergiquement with a fork. Pour the chocolate cream back into the plastic container, cover and place back in the freezer. Remove the ice cream from the freezer 30 minutes before serving.

Serve with chocolate sauce.

Bon courage!

Chocolate Spiral for the All Blacks

The World Cup is over. The tourists will leave. The Cup will stay. We will have to find something else to talk about.

I feel the Rugby World Cup has opened an entirely new door to rugby appreciation for me. (Beyond the players’ physiques…) For the opening weekend, quarter finals, semi finals and finals weekends I have been working at Eden Park in Auckland. The atmosphere has been quite electric and everyone is so passionate. We have been able to watch snippets of the games while polishing glasses and making coffee. It does get a bit exciting. Although, we do worry about the effect of the game on our guests. Are they too nervous to eat? Will they leave in disgust and embarrassment as soon as the final whistle has blown? Will they drink to their success or to their sorrow?

Before the semi finals game between the All Blacks and the Wallabies we were busy folding napkins discussing the various merits of Dan Carter and Richie McCaw.

We decided Richie was the one. He seems equally comfortable in both city and country. He is dashing in a suit but undoubtedly ruggedly handsome in a Swandri and gumboots. He can drink a beer with the boys or a cup of tea with your Nana. A bit of a lumberjack but he could probably whip up a sponge cake should he so desire. Gracious in defeat and in victory. And, that jaw line! Our male colleagues were not particularly impressed by this discussion.

This chocolate spiral is from Lois Daish’s fantastic book A Good Year. According to Daish, chocolate spiral is the sort of thing to make in October. Personally, I feel anytime of year would be ideal chocolate spiral eating time.

As I made this spiral cake, re-reading the recipe a thousand times (one can not serve Richie a messy chocolate spiral), I thought this recipe could not possibly work. I poured the chocolate mixture on to the baking tray. It seemed far too runny; it was surely going to bubble off the edges. I was expecting a burnt and blackened mess in the bottom of my stove. I pulled up a chair and took stove-side vigil.

But, instead it came out rather nicely with a light spring to the touch and a smooth finish. I filled the roll with sweet vanilla cream, chocolate may have been nice, but with the black and white it seemed rather fitting at the moment. Like a delicate fern frond, twirled in black and white. Or an All Black shirt, tightly wrapped and white collared.

Signing off like a lovesick teenager, Richie, this is for you.

Chocolate Sponge Spiral
From Lois Daish, A Good Year

3 eggs
75grams icing sugar, plus 2 teaspoons extra
15grams cocoa
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
pinch salt
pinch cream of tartar
10grams cornflour
25grams plain flour

Preheat oven to 210°C. Place a piece of baking paper on a baking tray.

Separate the eggs – yolks into a large bowl, whites into a slightly smaller bowl.

To the yolks add the 75grams icing sugar, cocoa, vanilla essence and salt.

To the whites add the cream of tartar. Beat the whites until just foamy then add the 2tsp icing sugar. Continue to beat until firm and droopy peaks form. (Not hard peaks, you don’t want the mixture to be too dry.)

Without washing the beaters, beat the egg yolk mixture until well combined. Detach the beaters and leave one beater in the bowl.

Mix the cornflour and flour together. Sieve half the mixture into the chocolate egg yolk mix, then add a heaped scoop of the egg whites. Fold gently but thoroughly together with the detached beater.

Sift the remaining flour and cornflour and add the remaining egg whites. Fold together with the detached beater. Lastly, use a plastic spatula to sweep the sides and bottom of the bowl.

Scoop the mixture onto the prepared baking tray and use the spatula to spread into a rectangle about 30cm x 15cm and 1cm thick.

Place in the oven for 8-10 minutes until the cake feels bouncy when gently pressed. Do not overcook or the cake will break when it is rolled.

When the cake is removed from the oven spread a clean tea towel on the bench. Lift the cake and the banking paper and place baking paper side up on the tea towel. Peel off the baking paper. If the paper sticks to the cake brush lightly with warm water and leave to sit for a few minutes.

While the cake is still warm, roll it up loosely and leave to cool on the tea towel on a cake rack. Once completely cooled, unroll and spread a sweetened cream filling. Roll up more tightly.

Sprinkle with icing sugar. This spiral cake is ideal for afternoon tea or dessert.

Vista Café for Wellington on a Plate

Saturday night, a family dinner to Vista Café in Oriental Bay. A casual dining experience where all the elements of a wonderful night came together beautifully.

The service was exceptional, the food simply delicious, the wine a perfect match.

We ordered a bottle of Spanish bubbles to start and were presented with a complimentary dish of warmed olives with dukkah crumbed feta.

The set menu for Wellington on a Plate was well thought out with interesting flavours and ingredients. The entree was a slither of hapuka confit on top of a crayfish bisque sauce with a panko crumbed egg. The egg was quite mysterious: a creamy, almost custardy yolk and a soft white, crusted in a toastey crumb. The entree was served with a glass of Alana Estate 2010 Riesling from Martinborough. A lovely choice to serve with the hapuka; slightly sweet on the palate with citrus undertones.

The main course was a slow cooked beef short rib with a potato and swede gratin, a fennel remoulade and jus. The short rib, cooked for 3 days, was still a pinkish medium-rare. It sat squarely on its little plate of a bone, falling at the touch of a fork. The fennel remoulade, with soft green curls of fennel, was fresh and complimented the richness of the short rib. For this course, the wine was a full bodied Pinot Noir, also from Alana Estate.

When my family was in Paris for a holiday a few years ago, we had a few rules about dining out. To sample all that French fare had too offer we tried very hard to not order the same dish. Here at Vista I really enjoyed everyone eating from the same menu. Instead of passing our plates and fork-fulls of food over the table, watching out for sleeves in candle flame, we could simply wax lyrical together.

Dessert was not included in the Wellington on a Plate menu but the blackboard selection at Vista is really very good. The chocolate fondant is light and not too sweet, with a fudgey centre and whole berries dropped around the edges. From my family’s plates I can also say the pear tarte tatin with honey ice cream is quite divine, as is the crumble…

Throughout the evening the service was impeccable. Our waiter was knowledgeable of not only the composition of the dish but how the ingredients were prepared; he gave high praise to his kitchen. At the end of our meal he poured us each a tasting of beautiful 12 year old sherry. Always a nice gesture.

For Wellington on a Plate or not, I will definitely be returning to Vista Café.

Calls for a celebration!

Jo Seagar's 'Happy Birthday' Large Deep Celebration Chocolate Cake.

Hello,

This is a cake worthy of celebrating in its own right. It is fudgey while maintaining a consistent crumb, it is not overly sweet: perfect for an afternoon tea treat, but as equally well matched with a soft Pinot for a winter dessert.

It is also sinfully simple. Delight in telling your guests, “oh, just something I whipped up.”

Literally.

Place all ingredients in a food processor and mix until it resembles chocolate soup. Ideal for pouring into the large (double-lined) baking tin. Or your mouth.

My family has been making this cake for as long as I can remember, a tried and true favourite. Yet, sometimes, I can’t help but feel like I’ve cheated. Where is the creaming and one-by-one addition of ingredients? The delicate folding? The multiple bowls and pots?

Whenever I’m in the mood for baking I find myself flicking to recipes oft-lusted after, pages which I have occasionally tenderly stroked. They are complicated recipes. Recipes to not only test my amateur baking skills but, which require I dig deep into my shallow student pockets. These may not be the best recipes by which to introduce myself.

But, can you ever go wrong with a Celebration cake? Eat a piece because it is Tuesday, because it is sunny today, because it might rain tomorrow, because yesterday I started university (for the second time). Eat a piece for this new blog.

Jo Seagar’s ‘Happy Birthday’ Large Deep Celebration Cake
From Jo Seagar‘s book You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble, darling

1 3/4 cups flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cups cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
1 cup strong black coffee
1 cup milk
1/2 cup soya or canola oil

Preheat oven to 180°C. Mix everything in a food processor until smooth and well combined. Pour into a greased and baking paper lined 23-25cm cake tin. Bake for approximately 90 minutes. Cool on rack, then ice.

As for icing, I use a chocolate buttercream icing or a chocolate ganache of good quality chocolate melted with cream.