Another birthday.

(Not mine! I’m not ageing that quickly. I hope.)

This one celebrates another year with a salted caramel chocolate cake. Based on Pierre Herme’s Faubourg Pave, with extra caramel shards flecked with cocoa nibs and vanilla salt, and truffles.

(Because life should get sweeter and richer, as you get older. 🙂 )

Cocoa Cake :
(enough for two Faubourg Paves; recipe for ganache here; from Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme)

1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon (40g) Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1/4 cup (35g) cake flour
3 1/2 tablespoons potato starch
5 1/2 tablespoons (75g) unsalted butter
9 large egg yolks, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups (150g) sugar
5 large egg whites, at room temperature

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 180’C. Butter two 18 x 9cm loaf pans,m then line the pans with baking paper.

Sift together the cocoa powder, cake flour, and potato starch and keep close at hand. Melt the butter and set it aside to cool until it is barely warm to the touch.

Working in a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the egg yolks and 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (75g) of the sugar on medium-high speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed, until the mixture is thick and pale, about 5 minutes. If you do not have a second mixer bowl, scrape the thickened egg yolks into a large bowl and wash and dry your mixer bowl; wash and dry the whisk attachment in any case.

Fit the mixer with the clean, dry bowl and whisk and whip the egg whites at medium speed just until they form soft peaks. Gradually add the remaining sugar and beat until the peaks are firm and shiny.

Working with a large rubber spatula and a light hand, fold the sifted dry ingredients and one-quarter of the beaten whites into the yolk mixture. Stir a few tablespoons of this mixture into the cooled melted butter, stirring to incorporate the butter as much as possible, then add the butter and the remaining whites to the yolk. Working quickly and gently, fold everything together.

Pour the batter into the prepared pans – it should come three-quarters of the way up the sides – then slide the pans into the oven. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. A slender knife inserted into the center of the cake should come out clean.

To cool the loaves, allow them to rest for 3 minutes in their pans, then gently unmold them onto cooling racks, delicately lift off the baking paper, and turn the cakes right side up to cool at room temperature.

(Welsh vanilla salt, pure vanilla extract, Lindt chocolate buttons)

So. I’ve been in a bit of a mini baking frenzy recently. The restaurant was closed for a few days to do some renovations (the floor in the hot part of the kitchen is badly cracked and split, for example), and I gleefully seized the opportunity to absolve myself of any responsibilities for those days (excepting having lunch in the city with a friend who is newly engaged) and barricaded myself at home with bags of flour and sugar. I even piked out on the Work Christmas Party, which is pretty bad of me I know.

But I promise you I have been using the time wisely.

November seems to be shaping up to be Love-Helen-Month in the Lemonpi household. I saw Helen’s post about her award-winning chilli recipe and made a lunge for it immediately. The boy loves chilli, you see. I make a batch of it on a vaguely regular basis. However, I’ve always thought in the back of my mind that my basic recipe could be somehow improved.

Helen’s recipe, I think, let me in on a few important secrets. The use of roasted garlic and chillis, for example (remembering the smell that filled my kitchen while the garlic was roasting, still makes me smile). The hand-cutting of the meat (as opposed to using ready-made mince, which is often minced too finely for what chilli should really be like) and that final flourish : a tiny bit of bittersweet chocolate stirred into the pot at the end, to enrichen it. All these and more, are what have made a big difference so far.

For this first attempt, I was forced to substitute a few ingredients based on what I could find on the day. Those pesky peppers, for example. Instead of habaneros, I used jalapenos, which are pretty hot, though I think they are probably a bit limp-wristed in comparison to habaneros. I also eschewed dried kidney beans in favour of black beans, which I had a big packet of. (A massive packet, in fact. Beans to last me for days. Beans I could be a bean-llionaire with, if ever adzukis, chickpeas, limas and turtles became the new currency.)

Cooking your own beans instead of using the tinned stuff is great especially if you happen to have the time to do it. Soak the dried beans in cold water the day before and the next day, bring them up to boil in plenty of fresh water, then simmer until cooked. Soaking the beans shortens the total cooking time and is apparently also the key to avoiding beans being the notoriously musical fruit we all know and love. You can also throw some aromats into the pot while the beans are simmering, to boost the flavour (and season with salt towards the end of the cooking time), but I skipped this step because I was planning on using part of the batch for some black bean brownies.

Yes, you heard right! Black.Bean.Brownies.!

It’s not often I find myself having time to bake from other blogs, even though I have tons and tons of bookmarked recipes, and I certainly never thought I’d find myself baking vegan, but I’m a big fan of Celine’s beautiful blog and lately I haven’t been able to take my mind off those tempting bites she offers up, like pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and black bean brownies.

These brownies were fun to make (you could say it was almost liberating, not working with eggs and butter for a change!) but are by no means the perfect brownie. However, I can see where they are heading, and Celine promises that an even better recipe is on it’s way, so keep an eye out for it!

In the meantime, B is due back from San Francisco soon. I’ve got the dinner and the dessert prepared. All I need now is the boy. 🙂

I have been threatening to make this tart by Helen for months now, ever since she first posted about it. It was the novel (to me) idea of having a healthy carrot and oat crust, that attracted me to the recipe. Also, with a filling of silverbeet (she used rainbow chard in the original), eggs and a restrained hand with the parmesan grater.. how could you go wrong with that combination?

When I finally made it for our dinner the other day, my only regret was that it had taken me so long to bake this fantastic tart. The crust despite being sufficiently healthy, was very tart-like, so you weren’t left feeling as though something had been compromised in terms of not having the usual shortcrust pastry. I believe, no buttery-tart-lover having tasted this, would have felt in the least bit duped.

The filling was bound by egg, but only just so (especially since the eggs I used were smaller), without it tasting like a frittata or a quiche, which B definitely isn’t a huge fan of. In fact, the end result was so delicious and made me feel so virtuous that I even went for seconds. (Thank you for the recipe, Helen! Next on my list is that award-winning chilli of yours 😀 )

Of course, after virtuosity, comes cake.

I have made a version of Eve’s chocolate cake many times before, but this time was sorely tested by the lack of proper equipment in my kitchen at home. Despite this, the rapid disappearance of the cake once it was assembled, is evidence enough of it’s success (or our greed).

What I love about this cake, apart from it being a completely flourless and nut-free chocolate cake, with minimal amounts of butter and added sugar, is the genius of having a cake topping made from the reserved unbaked cake mixture. That’s two-for-the-price-of-one, as far as any cake-making effort is concerned! If I hadn’t known that this cake was named after Damien Pignolet’s friend Eve Knottenbelt, I would’ve concluded that this cake was so called, because of it’s simple beauty, it’s grace and purity in flavour.

Eve’s Chocolate Cake :
(from French by Damien Pignolet)

360g bittersweet chocolate, chopped into small pieces
50g soft unsalted butter
12 x 65g eggs, separated
30g caster sugar
20g caster sugar
a little grated bittersweet chocolate and cocoa, to decorate

Grease a 26-28cm springform cake tin and line the base and sides with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 150’C.

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a bain-marie of hot (not boiling) water then work in the soft butter.

Beat the egg yolks with the 30g of sugar until pale. Combine them with the melted chocolate and butter.

Beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry (preferably in a copper bowl with a wire whisk), and then beat in the 20g of sugar until stiff.

Beat 1/4 of the egg-white mixture into the chocolate and then fold this gently but thoroughly back into the remaining egg-white mixture.

Transfer 1/4 of the cake mixture into a bowl and refrigerate. Pour the balance of the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 30-40 minutes. It should remain slightly moist in the centre; to test, press the centre with your finger after 30 minutes – it should hold the indentation.

Remove from the oven and turn out directly onto a serving platter. Remove the springform ring and base. Leave to cool completely. The cake will collapse to leave a crater in the centre. Fill the crater with the reserved mixture and scatter with the chocolate. Dust lightly with cocoa and serve with whipped cream.

[Note : Eve’s chocolate cake is my submission to Lorraine’s Chocolate Cake challenge. I’m afraid I don’t have a “best ever” chocolate cake recipe, as my ultimate cake varies from day to day, but this one is definitely up there. 🙂 ]