Quadruple Chocolate Cake

I just celebrated my birthday 2 days ago (May 29th), I had a fabulous time with my friends. My friends treated me to a wonderful merienda (afternoon snacks). My family and I will be celebrating my birthday on Sunday, when my sister and her hubby got back from a business trip. 

As you know, during my birthday I don't usually make a birthday cake, but this year I thought what a heck? I'll just make one. The problem is I don't know what kind I want and another thing is my pantry is low on basic ingredients like all purpose flour & walnuts, which are my favorite things to use. So I went in search for recipes that uses cake flour instead. I finally decided on 2 cakes a Red Velvet Cake from Buttercup Bakery which I've been drying to dry for a few months now and a Quadruple Chocolate Cake adapted from Nigella. With a name like quadruple chocolate cake, me being a bona-fide chocolate fiend, I just have to try it. It has 4 types of chocolate in it. First goes in the batter as cocoa powder, second as chocolate chip morsels, third as chocolate syrup, and lastly chocolate shards goes on top of the baked bake. What could be more satisfying than that?

The recipe originally calls for all purpose flour, which I currently so low on, couldn't use that, I substitute it with cake flour. I believe that cake flour makes cake more tender so I didn't hesitate to substitute that for this recipe.  I was a bit impatient yesterday that I couldn't ... yes COULDN'T! wait for the butter to soften. I just dump it in will all the dry ingredients in the food processor. Err...it turned into like coarse sand mixture! Oh oh I'm in big trouble...then I remember that I haven't put in wet ingredients phew! that's a relief. Now its a smooth very thick batter kind of like a dough actually. Then as you pour in the hot water, the magic begins it melts the batter turning into a smoooooth chocolate batter hmmm...I could eat it as is. Please self control people this is cake is so worth it. 

The chocolate morsels are then folded into to this thick and creamy chocolate batter and pour into a greased and lined loaf pan to be bake. While waiting tried to do two things at once. make the chocolate syrup and wash the dishes. That turned out to be a big mistake and I mean BIG! The chocolate syrup overflowed and I was left with a measly 1/4 cup of syrup! It made a HUGE mess in my microwave. Now I've learned my lesson, never leave boiling stuff in the microwave, it might overflow, duh! It also took me more than 45 minutes to bake the cake, it's such a thick cake anyway so it's okey. I just love making chocolate cakes because it when the house started to smelling like hot chocolate cake, it smells so homey. That is also a good indication that the cake is about to be finished so get ready. 

When it got out from the oven, I quickly drizzled in the chocolate syrup, for what's left it isn't enough but to lazy to make another one.  Roughly chopped the chocolates into shards and quickly scatter it on top of the chocolate cake while still hot so the shards will stick on it. It will turn out like a huge chocolate mountain with rough terrain (picture below) and when you slice into it you can see the chocolate morsels suspended in the batter (picture above).  

For those Chocolate Addicts like me, give this recipe a try it sure is a good chocolate fix nicely paired with a glass of cold milk. Gotta go and get my chocolate fix!

QUADRUPLE CHOCOLATE CAKE

by: Nigella Lawson from Feast:Food to Celebrate Life

• 200 g plain flour (I used cake flour)
• 1/2 tsp bicarb aka baking soda
• 50 g cocoa
• 275 caster sugar
• 175 g softened butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 Tbsp real vanilla extract
• 80 ml sour cream
• 125 ml boiling water
  
• 175 g chocolate morsels
• 125 ml water
• 1 tsp cocoa powder (I used 2-3 tsp to give it a oomph!)
• 100 g caster sugar
• 25 g chocolate, roughly chopped

In the food processor add, flour, bacarb, cocoa, sugar, butter, eggs, cream and vanilla, blitz until smooth and sandy batter. Scrape down and blitz again while gradually adding the boiling water down the funnel.  Fold in the chocolate morsels and pour the batter into a prepared pan.  Bake for 1 hour in a preheated 170C/gas mark 3 or until set and toothpick inserted is not totally clean but still has some gooey crumbs that clings.

While the cake is baking make the syrup, put cocoa, sugar and water in a saucepan and boil for 5 minutes or until the liquid reduces and turn dark and syrupy. Take the cake out of the oven, pouring in the syrup as evenly as possible. Don't worry the cake will absorb all the syrup.

When the cake becomes completely cold, take it out of the pan and scatter the chocolate shards, with all the chocolate syrup put in earlier, the shards will stick to the cake (but since I had a syrup accident I put my shards on while hot). Slice in whatever thickness you want, grab a glass of cold milk and enjoy!

Sweet Nutty Crust

Still in my Pierre Herme mood, I made his Sweet Pastry Tart Dough. Over the years for blog hopping, I've read so much good review about this particular crust, that I know I have to try it. As some of my regular readers might have notice, I hardly make pies, not if I can help it that is. I still haven't master the art of making the perfect pie crust. I compensate my pie weakness by making tarts instead. I like tarts because usually they have this cookie dough like crust which is basically dump and mix and crust is ready to chill and be use.

What I love about Pierre's book is that there are instructions for both mixer users and in a food processor users. How cool is that! I would have tried making it in my trusty KitchenAid mixer but then I needed to chopped the walnuts separately and well...it's Sunday afternoon I'm feeling lazy so food processor got my vote.

Since I was gifted a food processor for my birthday last year, I still haven't made any crust in it until now. I'm amaze how quickly this crust got made. As we speak I have 3 disk of this sitting in my fridge. I didn't read it thoroughly because it said so in the book that they recommend 2 days of chilling. I'm now thinking of what to top them with. Of course I have to try it with PH's lemon tart, that one got good reviews as well. I have to think of 2 more topping/fillings. Oh, I can't wait to get started.

PIERRE HERME'S SWEET PASTRY TART

by: Pierre Herme & Dorie Greenspan from Desserts by Pierre Herme

• 2 1/2 sticks of butter, room temperature
• 1 2/3 cups confectioner's sugar, sifted
  
• 1 egg
• 3 1/2 cup all purpose flour, sifted
  
• 1/2 cup almonds flour/ground almonds (I used walnuts)
  
• pinch of salt

In a food processor, mix the butter and the confectioner's sugar until well blended. The original recipe calls for almond flour or ground almonds, but since I have neither handy I threw in my last stash of walnuts. Add the egg and pinch of salt. Before adding the AP flour , remember to scrape down your bowl to ensure that every ingredients are thoroughly mixed. Add the flour in 3 stages, the finish dough will be soft like a cookie dough. divide into 3 disk and wrap in clingwrap and chill for several days. I like the outcome of using the walnuts, my final crust have specks of brown in them which kind of look pretty to me.

Pierre's Lemon Loaf Cake

In the pastry world and to all the foodies in the world, everybody knows who Pierre Herme is. If you don't let me enlighten you.  Pierre Herme is the Picasso of the pastry world, his creations are very much sought after and in his patisserie in Paris, it's always full of people both Parisians and foreigners paying homage to his creations.

Since going to Paris is currently still a dream for me, I get to visit it through my imagination and by reading Desserts by Pierre Herme which was written by Dorie Greenspan (one of my favorite author). His desserts in this book ranges from something so simple to elaborate show pieces, but don't worry the steps are long but explained very clearly and the pictures themselves are gorgeous. 

I must admit I bought his book last year been reading through it many many times, but this is the first time I made something from it. I started with something easy the Lemon Loaf Cake. What intrigue me with this particular recipe is that it didn't use lemon juice in the batter which is what I was expecting in a lemon cake, but uses only lemon rinds(lemon zest)! I like using my microplane to zest my lemons.  Although they cost more than a lemon zester, with it's ease of use and versatility, it's worth the prize.  I even use it to grate chocolates and hard cheese.

The other reason I made this cake is because it uses cake flour instead of all purpose flour which was what I find I used the most quite recently. Cake flour is NOT the same as self rising flour, which is a cake flour with the leavening already added into it. I remember when I was in grade school you can easily find self rising flour in the supermarket but now no more, so I tend to make my own if the recipe calls for it, which thankfully is very seldom.

Let's start baking! 

LEMON LOAF CAKE

by: Pierre Hereme & Dorie Greenspan from Desserts by Pierre Herme

• Zest of 3 lemons (I used 4 small lemons)
• 6 room temperature eggs
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 stick + 1 tbsp. melted butter
• pinch of salt
• 3 1/2 tbsp rum
• 2 2/3 cup of cake flour (not self rising flour)
• 3/4 tsp. baking powder
• 3/4 cup heavy cream or creme fresh (I used all purpose cream)

The process in making this cake is very easy. The actual recipe calls for a zest of 3 lemons, but since I got 4 small lemons handy, I used all the zest of all four of them. The zest are then mixed in with 2 cups of sugar until it resembles wet sand, this smells soooo...good. The eggs were then added to the mixing bowl along with the lemon sugars, mixed until pale and fluffy.  While waiting for the eggs I melted the butter and sifter together cake flour and the baking powder.  Once the eggs are pale and fluffy, add the rum, pinch of salt and cream. I didn't have creme fresh and heavy cream handy, I used all purpose cream which seems to do just fine. When all the wet mixture are incorporated, on low speed gently add the dry ingredients in 3 intervals, avoid over mixing.  I then gently scrapped down the sides of the bowl and folded in the few remaining specks of flour.  The butter now at room temperature is gently folded in the fluffy mixture, in 3 intervals. At first it looks separated but as you continue folding it the mixture homogenize. 

Butter and line 2 loaf pans and divide the batter evenly.  The instruction clearly states butter and flour the pan, but whenever I do that I get this white film outside my cake which doesn't really have a taste but it just doesn't look good for me. Bake this in a preheated 350 degrees oven for 55 to 60 minutes. Check after 30 minutes, because oven varies. Mine was done in 40 minutes.  If it gets too brown, I usually tent mine with foil to avoid over browning.

To make it more lemony, while the cakes are baking make the LEMON SIMPLE SYRUP

• 1/3 cup water
• 3 1/2 tbsp. sugar
• 2 tbsp. lemon juice

Dissolve the sugar in the water in a saucepan and cool until room temperature.  Add the lemon juice.

When the cakes are done quickly pour in the lemon simple syrup into each cakes and cool till room temperature.  The original recipe called for melted lemon jam for the glazed but I don't have that so I just omitted that step. 

This cake definitely gets points for making the house smells so yummy and it was done after 2 hours! that was quick, right.  And I remember all the ingredients as I was typing this entry. Isn't that cool or what? normally I forget.  But since this is such an easy recipe with easy ingredients, I could still remember vividly. Hmmm...I'm wondering how long will it takes before I forget. =D