RECIPE: Rocky road cake

When considering the important question of how to get as much chocolatey deliciousness as possible into one slice of cake the other day, I decided this recipe would do the trick. I’m not talking a mega rich, dense chocolate cake. I wanted something with layers, something interesting, fun, and a little different. Something involving lots of chocolate, but without drying your mouth out and making you want to down several glasses of water after eating it. My younger sister should actually take the credit for the invention of this amazing rocky road chocolate cake, as she first had the idea for it earlier this year. I have shamelessly copied and adapted her recipe.

The cake base is an old family classic, the one that my mum cracks out for every birthday or special occasion. It is simple, light and delicious, and to me it’s exactly how a chocolate cake should taste. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I? Licking the bowl of this mixture instantly takes me back to ‘helping’ mum in the kitchen when I was little. It’s super easy – to make it, you’ll need:

- 6 oz plain chocolate

- 2 oz butter

- 4 eggs, room temperature

- half a teaspoon of vanilla extract

- pinch of salt

- 9 oz caster sugar

- 6 oz self raising flour

Preheat the oven to 170 C and grease a large cake tin. Melt the chocolate and the butter, stir well and leave to cool. Beat the eggs with the vanilla and salt, then sift in the sugar and mix well. This is the point at which you mix in the cooled chocolate mixture. Then finally sift in the flour and mix well. Pour into the cake tin and bake for 35-40 mins before testing. The centre should be moist but not runny when you take it out. Leave the cake to one side to cool before turning it out of its tin. (Don’t worry if it sinks a little, or the top cracks – it’s meant to do that, it’s kind of meringuey on top and collapses a little. The icing will even it out.)

For the icing, cream around 4 oz softened butter with around 7 oz caster sugar, then melt a small block of plain chocolate, allow to cool and then stir in until the icing is smooth. Ice the cake and then prepare the final touch – the rocky road for the top. You’ll need:

- 4 oz butter

- 1 and a half tablespoons of golden syrup

- 1 oz cocoa powder

- 1 large packet of malteasers, crushed

- 1 packet of marshmallows, cut up into halves (I use scissors)

- half a block of plain chocolate

- half a block of milk chocolate

Melt the butter, golden syrup and cocoa powder in a bowl over a pan of water. Take off the heat, and stir in the marshmallows and the malteasers. Leave this to cool a little, and then pour onto the top of the cake, over the chocolate buttercream icing. Finally, melt the plain and milk chocolate together, pour over the top of the cake and use the back of  a spoon to swirl the melted chocolate with the rocky road mixture. Put the cake in the fridge to set.

It sounds incredibly rich with all of that chocolate and sugar, and it is very filling, but because the cake is so moist and light, the whole thing avoids being too much. This is the cake equivalent of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream: just the right chocolate-to-marshmallow ratio. Perfect for a chocolate cake occasion when you want to do something just a little bit different.

Make your own chocolate macaroons

We’ve suspected that my dad has a wheat allergy for a while now, and recently persuaded him to try giving it up to see if it improves his health. I don’t blame him for his reluctance – when you start to think about it, there’s flour in almost all baked goods. I, for one, would find it incredibly hard to live without cake.

When I went to Paris last month, I swore one day I’d learn to make macaroons that tasted something like the heavenly ones I sampled at Ladurée. I think what distinguishes them from lesser quality brands is that you can barely taste the almond, and this is exactly how it should be. The macaroon is a delicious bite-size, meringue-y, gooey-in-the-middle, adorably pretty and stylish vehicle for whatever flavour you choose – raspberry, lemon, pistachio, caramel… I had a go at Nigella’s recipe for chocolate macaroons (she is, after all, queen of all things chocolate), but surprisingly they didn’t quite cut it. A flour-free recipe, this would have been the perfect treat for my dad’s new diet, but he also happens to be allergic to nuts. (As in, rush-him-to-a-hospital, stick-a-needle-in-his-leg type of allergic.) This inspired me to a little experimentation in the kitchen, and I tried adapting Nigella’s recipe, using wheat-free/gluten-free flour instead of ground almonds. It worked beautifully. I’m on a macaroon making high, and next I’m going to try branching out to other flavours. Watch out, everyone, you’re probably going to get a box of home-made macaroons for Christmas. Try it, you’re guaranteed to get addicted, too.

Ingredients:

260g icing sugar

115g wheat-free, gluten-free plain flour

35g cocoa powder

4 large egg whites

25g caster sugar

(for the filling)

3 tablespoons double cream

125g plain chocolate, chopped

1 and a half tablespoons of butter

Preheat the oven to 180 C/gas mark 4 and line two baking trays with baking parchment. Sift together the icing sugar, flour and cocoa powder and mix thoroughly. Whisk the egg whites in a separate bowl until they form really stiff peaks. Sift in the caster sugar and beat some more, until you can hold the bowl upside-down and the mixture doesn’t fall out. It is very important that you don’t wait at this stage – once you’ve beaten the egg whites and sugar, quickly fold gently into the dry ingredients. Don’t over mix this, but keep as light and fluffy as possible. Put about two teaspoons-worth of the mixture into evenly spaced neat blobs on the baking parchment, and once you’ve done this, leave them to sit and form a skin for about 15 minutes. Then bake them for around 12 minutes. They should be dry on top, but still gooey inside. Don’t worry if some of the tops look a little cracked.

While the macaroons are baking, melt the butter, cream and chocolate together and allow to cool. When everything has cooled, sandwich two macaroon halves with the chocolate mixture. Sprinkle with cocoa powder, et voila!

RECIPE: Baked lemon and raspberry cheesecake

I was looking for a baked lemon cheesecake recipe last weekend, but the ones I found were all too fussy and involved beating eggs and several types of cream. I couldn’t be bothered with all that so I adapted this vanilla flavoured recipe that was much simpler to make. Frankly, I think it’s the best dessert I’ve made since my raw rhubarb cake.

You will need:
14 ginger nut biscuits
50g butter , melted
600g cream cheese
2 tbsp plain flour
175g caster sugar
1 tspn vanilla extract
2 eggs , plus 1 yolk
150ml sour cream
2 lemons
1 punnet of raspberries
1 punnet of strawberries

1. Heat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Crush the biscuits in a food processor (or put in a plastic bag and bash with a rolling pin). Mix with the butter. Press into a 20cm springform tin and put in the fridge to chill.

2. Mix the cream cheese with the sour cream, sugar, flour, vanilla extract, eggs, the yolk, the zest of 2 lemons and the juice of one until light and fluffy. I’d recommend using a whisk and beating the cream cheese with the sour cream first to loosen it up so you don’t get any lumps.

3. Put a handful of whole raspberries into the base before pouring over the cheese mixture. Bake for 40 minutes and then check, it should be set but slightly wobbly in the centre. Leave in the tin to cool.

4. Serve with a dollop of sour cream and some extra raspberries and/or strawberries.

RECIPE: Beetroot Bombay cocktail

Inspired by the delicious cocktails we sampled at the Bombay Sapphire Imagination Series event in Shoreditch last week, I’m going to try making my own.

Beetroot isn’t the most obvious flavour for a cocktail, but I loved the unusual and refreshing taste – and it looked pretty cute, too. Here’s the recipe.

Beetroot Bombay cocktail

Mix a measure of gin with a generous squeeze of fresh lemon juice, a teaspoon or so (depending on how sweet you want it) of sugar, four dashes of liquorice oil and muddle it together with a large splash of fresh beetroot juice. Serve in a champagne saucer or margarita cocktail glass, with a large ice ball and a pink flower to garnish.

I like this one so much it might be my new Cosmo. I hope it catches on!

Check out what Katie and I got up to at the event last week.

RECIPE: Melting chocolate pots

Nigella still comes top of my list of celebrity chefs when it comes to delicious, easy desserts. I’ve made these melt-in-the-middle warm chocolate pots for a few dinner parties recently, and they’ve been a winner every time. Everyone thinks I’m just being modest when I protest that they are super easy to make, but now you know the secret too. Nigella suggests putting them in moulds and turning them out onto a plate after baking, but if you want to keep it simple (like I do), just serve them in the ramekins they were baked in.

You’ll need:

-       50g unsalted butter

-       350g good quality dark chocolate

-       150g caster sugar

-       4 large eggs

-       pinch of salt

-       1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

-       50g plain flour

-       6 small oven proof glass or ceramic ramekins

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C/gas mark 6. Melt the chocolate and set it aside to cool. Cream together the butter and the sugar, then beat in the eggs one at a time with the pinch of salt. Add the vanilla and stir well, until completely smooth. Add the flour, stir well again, and then add the chocolate.

Divide the finished batter into the 6 ramekins, arrange on a baking tray and cook for around 10 minutes until slightly risen and crusty on top, but still gooey inside. If that’s not quite enough, add a dollop of crème fraîche or vanilla ice cream.