Category: Cakes
Tahini Chocolate Cake

Tahini Chocolate Cake

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What the hell is tahini I hear you ask? To be honest, the first time I heard about it I thought it could be an exotic grass skirt dance from the Caribbean. But alas… no.  It’s actually a sesame seed paste that is used a lot in Middle Eastern cooking and is a key component of hummus. So if you like hummus you’ll definitely like this, but fear not, this is not hummus cake! The tahini goes in the icing to make a salty, sweet, nutty filling for these super moist chocolate cakes that just works so so well.

This is one of those things that will only make sense when you try it, so if you’re looking at this a little doubtingly then I’d recommend just giving it a go! I made my own sesame snaps for this as I couldn’t for the life of me find any anywhere in the shops, but in the recipe I’ve said use sesame snaps as they taste better and make your life so much easier.

Recipe

Serves 12

Time: 90 minutes

Ingredients

For the chocolate cake

  • 180g Unsalted butter
  • 100g Dark chocolate
  • 240g Plain flour
  • 280g Caster sugar
  • 1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
  • 3 tbsp Cocoa powder, plus extra for dusting
  • 2 Large eggs
  • 142ml Milk
  • 142ml Greek yoghurt
  • 2 tbsp Tahini

To Decorate

  • 230g Unsalted butter
  • 3 tbsp Tahini
  • 320g Icing sugar
  • 2 Packets of sesame snaps

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180˚C. Grease and line two 7.5 inch cake tins.
  2. First make the chocolate cake. Melt the butter and chocolate together in a heat-proof bowl over a pan of simmering water.
  3. In a bowl mix the flour, sugar, bicarb and cocoa together.
  4. In another bowl whisk together the egg, milk, and yoghurt. Add this mixture and the chocolate mixture to the flour mixture, along with the tahini and 100ml boiling water. Whisk quickly until combined and then pour this into the two lined tins.
  5. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean once inserted. Leave the cakes to cool for 15 minutes before turning them out onto wire racks and leaving to cool completely.
  6. Now make the icing. Put the butter and tahini into a bowl and mix with a wooden spoon until smooth and creamy. Add the icing sugar and beat it into the mixture until smooth. Spoon the icing into a piping bag fitted with a round nozzle and leave in the fridge until needed.
  7. When the cakes have cooled completely put one onto a plate. Pipe blobs of the icing over the base layer and then place the other cake on top.
  8. Pipe the rest of the icing over the top of the cake in blobs.  Dust the cake with a little cocoa powder. Then break the sesame snaps into shards and place them around the top of the cake. Serve!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x
Easy Chocolate Pudding with Chocolate Custard

Easy Chocolate Pudding with Chocolate Custard

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From an easy main to an easy dessert, I love making complicated things but there are those times when you just need something you can throw together without thinking about it. Being a student I’m truly experiencing the struggles of little money, little space and little time, so that’s when something like this becomes a godsend. This can be made in the oven or a microwave and so it’s the perfect last-minute, ‘I need chocolate cake now’ kind of dessert.

Of course no good fudgy sponge cake is complete without a good dollop of custard. For this one I’ve used custard powder. Whilst I think fresh custard made with eggs is always a lot nicer, you can’t deny the ease and speed at which you can make custard with a powder mix, so in the interest of preserving your sanity this custard recipe is as quick and as easy as you could want it to be! By extension though, if you don’t want to bother making custard at all, or if you don’t have a hob at your disposal you can use packet custard and then either add cocoa powder to it or just leave it as a vanilla custard.

Recipe

Serves  8

Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

For the sponge

  • 180g Butter
  • 80g Light brown sugar
  • 50g Cocoa powder
  • 3 Large eggs
  • 2 tbsp Whole milk
  • 175g Self raising flour

For the custard

  • 400ml Milk
  • 5 tbsp Custard powder
  • 5 tbsp Light brown sugar
  • 25g Cocoa powder

To serve

  • Fresh berries (e.g blueberries, strawberries or raspberries)
  • Ice cream or Sorbet (I recommend raspberry sorbet with this!)

Method

  1. Take a 1L pudding bowl and butter the inside (this can be any kind of bowl but just make sure it’s not metal as it’ll be going into the microwave).
  2. Put the butter and sugar into a bowl and beat until smooth. Add the cocoa powder to the mix and then stir until combined.
  3. Add the eggs and milk to the batter and whisk them in, followed by the flour to get a pourable mixture.
  4. Pour the mixture into the greased pudding bowl and cover loosely with clingfilm. Then microwave for 4 ½ minutes on high heat until cooked through. Check the pudding with a skewer to make sure the centre’s not raw, and then leave the pudding to rest for a few minutes.
  5. Meanwhile make the custard. Put the milk into a pan and bring to the boil.
  6. Put the custard powder, sugar and cocoa powder into a bowl and whisk together. Pour a little of the milk onto the mixture and whisk in to make a smooth paste. Then slowly pour the rest of the warm milk into the mixture, whisking constantly, until combined.
  7. Pour the custard mix back into the pan and then cook whilst whisking over a medium heat until the mixture thickens.
  8. Turn the pudding out onto a plate and then pour some of the custard over the top. Serve slices of the pudding with the rest of the custard, fresh berries and sorbet/ice-cream!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x
Coffee and Vanilla Zebra Cake

Coffee and Vanilla Zebra Cake

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I’m going Zebra themed this week!!! Wahey! Have I gone mad? No! Y’ see now that I’m officially an art student I was thinking about writing some artistic gumph on how zebras can be symbolic of who knows what and so on, but the truth is I’ve just made a zebra cake because I’ve wanted to make one of these for years and they look so cool. So here we go – zebra cakes 101. These are defined by their vertical stripes made by piping blobs of different coloured cake mix on top of each other to make a series of concentric rings (it’s essentially a fancy marble cake). Here I’ve gone for coffee and vanilla as they’re so good together and just sing out to comfort, but you can pair any two that have different colours (e.g chocolate and vanilla, raspberry and lemon, or chocolate and orange).

Now of course all good coffee cakes should be accompanied with walnuts, however with zebra cakes you want the mixture to be fairly smooth as you’ll be piping it. So to stop chunks of walnuts clogging up m’ nozzle I’ve added them to the filling so this has become a sort of coffee-walnut cake, but you can leave the walnuts out if you’d rather. The trick is also to just be patient. Half way through you’ll want to just go ‘what the heck’ and shove both mixes on top of each other and be done with it, but keep going and it’ll look fab!

Recipe

Serves 8

Time: 90 minutes (including baking and cooling)

Ingredients

For the cake

  • 240g Caster sugar
  • 240g Butter
  • 4 Eggs
  • 250g Self raising flour
  • 2 tsp Baking powder
  • 1 tbsp Coffee powder
  • 1 tbsp Milk
  • ½ tsp Vanilla extract

For the icing/to decorate

  • 225g Icing sugar
  • 100g Butter
  • 1 ½ tbsp Coffee
  • 1 tbsp Milk
  • A handful of Walnuts, roughly chopped

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Grease and line two 18cm round tins with butter and baking paper.
  2. Put the butter and sugar into a bowl and beat with a wooden spoon until pale and creamy.
  3. Add the eggs one by one to the mixture, whisking in between each addition until combined. Add the flour and whisk again to make a smooth batter.
  4. Pour half the cake mixture (about 475g) into another bowl. Add the vanilla to this batch and then pour the mixture into a piping bag.
  5. Put the coffee and milk into a small bowl and stir until the coffee dissolves. Add the coffee to the other bowl of cake mixture and mix until combined. Pour the mixture into another piping bag.
  6. Pipe a blob of the vanilla mixture into the centre of each of your lined tins. Then pipe a blob of an equal size on top of the first blob. Repeat piping blobs on top of each other until all the mixture is used up.
  7. Move the tins around to make sure the mixture coats the whole of the tin (but don’t spread it around with a spatula as this will disrupt your layers!). Then bake the cakes in the oven for 15-20 minutes until risen and golden brown. A skewer inserted into the middle should come out clean.
  8. Transfer the cakes to a wire rack and leave to cool before taking them out of the tins.
  9. Meanwhile move onto the icing. Put the icing sugar and butter into a bowl and beat together until smooth and creamy.
  10. Put the coffee and milk into another small bowl and stir until dissolved. Add the coffee mix to the buttercream and mix all together until smooth. Then spoon the icing into a piping bag with a star shaped nozzle.
  11. Put one of your cakes onto your presentation plate. Then pipe blobs of the icing around the edge of the cake. Pipe icing into the middle so the cake is completely covered (you don’t have to do blobs for the middle bit, you could just pipe and then smooth it over with a knife). Scatter the chopped walnuts over the middle of the icing.
  12. Finally take your other cake and place it on top of the base with the best side facing up. Then pip a ring of icing around the edge on the top and serve!

Thanks for reading. If you try this please take a photo and send it to me, I love seeing people use my recipes! Have a great week!

Emma x

 
Banana, Cinnamon and Rum Friands

Banana, Cinnamon and Rum Friands

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The first time I had a friand was in NYC on an Art trip a couple of years ago . My friends and I found this amazing patisserie shop near where we were staying and consequentially had delicious viennoisserie and patisserie for breakfast every morning. One day I had a raspberry friand – which is basically a chewy but very light cake, and it was so insanely good! I can still remember sitting on a bench in central park, everything turning orange and red because it was on the cusp of autumn, and biting into this moist fruity cake with a delicious chew on it. Since then whenever I’ve made friands they’ve reminded me of my amazing trip and so I thought it was about time I make some and write up a recipe of my own for them.

I’ve always loved the flavour combination of cinnamon and banana, so I thought this in a  friand would be cool. I’ve topped these with  rum icing which is optional but is also very delicious so I’d really recommend trying it out. This icing also goes really well with any sponge cake, crumble or generally warm pudding, so if you make too much just keep it in a pot in the fridge for when you need it! Traditionally these are made in little oval tins, but as I didn’t have a specific financier tin I just used a well-greased muffin tin which seemed to do the trick.

Recipe

Makes 12 Friands

Time: 20 minutes, plus cooking time

Ingredients

For the Friand

  • 55g Ground almonds
  • 110g Caster sugar
  • 30g Plain flour
  • ½ tsp Ground cinnamon
  • A large pinch of Salt
  • 50g Butter, melted
  • 3 large Egg whites
  • 2 large Bananas

For the rum caramel icing

  • 60g Butter
  • 75g Light brown sugar
  • 3 tbsp Whole milk
  • 1 tbsp Rum
  • 100g Icing sugar

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C and then grease a 12 hole muffin tin with butter.
  2. Now make the cake mixture. Put the ground almonds, sugar, flour, cinnamon and salt into a bowl and whisk together. Add the melted butter and egg whites to the mix and whisk until smooth.
  3. Take one of the bananas and mash it in a bowl with a fork. Then add it to the mix and whisk it in.
  4. Then take the other banana and slice it into slices the thickness of a £1 coin. Put one of these slices into the bottom of each of the muffin holes. Top with an ice cream scoop of the cake mixture and then bake the firands in the oven for 20 minutes until golden brown on top and cooked all the way through (a knife or skewer inserted into the centre will come out clean).
  5. Take a knife and run it round the edge of the cakes to loosen them from the tin and then turn the cakes out onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely.
  6. Now make the icing. Put the butter into small pan and melt gently. Then add the sugar and heat whilst stirring until the sugar dissolves.
  7. Add the milk and bring to the boil. Then remove from the heat and add the rum. Stir and then leave to cool to room temperature.
  8. Once cooled add the icing sugar to the mixture and stir to make a smooth icing. Pour the icing into a pipping bag with a small nozzle and then drizzle over the friands.  Serve!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x
Mad Hatter’s Tea Party

Mad Hatter’s Tea Party

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“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast” – Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland.

We’re at the end of book themed month (where did that go?!) and so I’ve decided to end like we started and do a week of recipes themed around one book – this time that good old favourite Alice in Wonderland! I’m from Oxford and there’s loads of Lewis Carrol references around the city that I’ve been trotted around since I was very young, so I’ve always had a fondness for this crazy story. Although it’s technically a children’s book I think the actual themes and plot are pretty incomprehensible and I remember being really confused with it as a kid, but re-reading the book now in my early adult years I’m finding it much more insightful and interesting.

So, back to why we’re here, the food! When doing an Alice in Wonderland themed week on a food blog it’s kinda compulsory to do a Mad Hatter’s tea party so that’s what we have. This is an all bells and whistles afternoon tea, but you could scale it back if you don’t want to spend two days baking. If you really don’t want to bake that much you could just take inspiration from what I’ve put together and buy the elements from a shop. I have to admit to being sooo tempted to just buy a bakewell tart on my way out of the shop when I was buying the ingredients for this! In my opinion a ‘complete’ afternoon tea needs…

• Finger sandwiches

• Scones

• Some kind of cake

• Some kind of biscuit

• Something made out of choux pastry (e.g a profiterole)

• Something made out of Shortcrust pastry (e.g a tart)

• And of course lots of tea!

I’ll be posting a recipe a day which you’ll be able to find on the main page of my blog, or on this post where I’ll be collating all the links…

First up is the base of all afternoon teas – finger sandwiches!

Afternoon Tea Sandwiches

Scones

Banana, Cinnamon and Rum Friands

Bakewell Tartlets

Passion Fruit and Chocolate Profiteroles

Chocolate Ginger Biscuit Shards

Thanks for reading!

Emma x