Italian dessert

I was hunting for something quick and easy to make before we set off for Manchester to see the Revolution track cycling series. I bought the River Cafe Pocket Books: Puddings, Cakes and Ice Creams book quite a while ago but haven't made much out of it. The recipes I have tried have always been easy and tasty so I turned to it for inspiration. I came across a recipe for a torta caprese that had only a few ingredients in it and sounded quite quick and simple. The recipe calls for 100% cocoa solid chocolate which I couldn't get at short notice so I used 85% instead. The finished cake was moist and delicious and well worth hunting down the 100% chocolate to try it again. Some of the places that do it are Selfridges, Ocado and the chocolate trading company.

Ingredients (serves 8 )

• 225g softened unsalted butter


• 225g sugar


• 6 large eggs, separated


• 225g almonds coarsely ground


• 225 100% Chocolate, coarsely ground in a food processor

Butter and line the base of a deep 25cm cake tin and preheat your oven to 150 degrees centigrade. 

Beat together butter and sugar in a electric mixer until it has become pale in colour. This should take about five minutes or so. Drop in the egg yolks one at a time and beat in after each addition. Then tip in the almonds and the chocolate and mix together.

Beat the egg whites in another bowl until soft peaks form. Take about two or three tablespoons of the egg whites and gently mix through the stiff chocolate mixture with a metal spoon to slacken it a little. Add this to the rest of the egg whites and gently incorporate. 

Tip the mixture into the tin and level with the back of a spoon. Bake for about 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

Allow to cool slightly in the tin before turning onto a cooling rack.

Tour De France birthday cake

I have been a bit busy of late and haven't had a much of a chance to post anything on the blog so I have a bit of a backlog. I will eventually get to it but in the meantime I'll post a picture of the birthday cake I made for the other half for his birthday.

He is a keen cyclist and has been glued to the Tour De France over the last few weeks, so I thought a stage of the tour would be a good idea for a cake. Carving an unusual shape for the mountain and icing it was most fun but making the bicycle was a bit of a chore and I eventually thought that it would be easier to make a broken bike and a rather battered, bruised and disheveled looking cyclist. Throughout the tour you notice a lot of graffiti on the road, mainly for a local terrorist separatist group and large scale male and female genitalia, but I thought it might be a tad more tasteful just to put some of the competitors names on the road instead. He was really impressed with it so I will now use this as leverage for almost any household task for the next thirty plus years. 

Banana cake and lycra-clad sportsmen

This weekend we went to see a track cycling event at the Manchester Velodrome. I'm not generally a big fan of cycling but when given the opportunity of seeing large numbers of finely tuned, musclebound men in close fitting sportswear, I thought to myself there are worse ways to spend a Saturday night. It doesn't tend to matter whether you are into sports or not as live sporting events are always quite exciting. This was no exception and what better way to keep up your energy up while watching hugely fit athletes pounding round and round a track than Banana and chocolate loaf.

This was another recipe out of my new book and it went down a treat, possibly making a record and only lasting about three hours between four hungry people.

Ingredients:

• 250g plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 125g unsalted butter, softened
• 250g caster sugar
•  4 ripe bananas, mashed
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 175g good quality dark or milk chocolate, chopped

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade. Beat together all the ingredients apart from the flour and baking powder. Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture and combine gently with a cutting and folding motion, making sure not to overmix. Pour the batter into a greased loaf tin (about 19 cm x 11cm) and bake for an hour and fifteen minutes, or until a skewer comes out of the center of the bread cleanly. Leave to cool for a few minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack. This doesn't hang around so hide it away if you want some for yourself.