Another Dan Lepard recipe! This time it's for the
We Should Cocoa February challenge, which is to use the marvellous combination of chocolate and ginger together. This is a combination that's hard to beat in any form. Christmas isn't the same without a box of fiery, sweet crystallised ginger, covered in a bitter dark chocolate, and a touch of cocoa, or a few chunks of chocolate, will improve most gingerbread cakes. Conversely, a rich chocolate torte flavoured with ginger is bliss too. Like Jen, of
Blue Kitchen Bakes, this month's We Should Cocoa host, I'm slightly surprised this combination hasn't come up before, but I'm really pleased it has now!
For this challenge, I wanted to keep the chocolate and ginger flavours as separate as possible, so that both could be enjoyed to the maximum.
This recipe, from Dan's Guardian column, uses a lot of chocolate and quite a lot of glacé ginger to flavour the cake. The cake batter itself has the merest hint of ginger, so that most of the flavour comes from chewing the lumps in the cake. This cake has a dense, moist crumb, aided by the addition of both ground almonds and cream cheese. It baked well too, to give an even tender crumb.
I wanted this to be an everyday cake, so didn't add any frosting, and the cake was so rich, moist and well-flavoured that I don't think it suffered because of this.
"The icing on the cake" really isn't a necessity here! I followed Dan's advice to use a bitter chocolate and used a mix of the remaining 75g of Willie's chef's drops, cut in half, which are really bitter to eat, and 50g of a 74% eating chocolate.
The We Should Cocoa challenge
(rules here) is a monthly challenge started by Choclette of
Chocolate Log Blog, and Chele of
Chocolate Teapot. It's been running for around 2 1/2 years now, and each month's new theme for combinig chocolate and a special ingredient is often chosen by a guest host, as has happened this month. Look for a round-up of entries on
Blue Kitchen Bakes at the end of this month.
10 comments:
You know that every time I see a chocolate and ginger recipe I think of you! Although I am now thinking of dates stuffed with ginger and marzipan and dipped in chocolate. I wish I had an excuse for that!
That sounds a marvellous combination. You've made my mouth water!
Looks delicious and I love how big and chunky the bits of chocolate and ginger are. Yum
Looks good, and I love any chocolate/ginger combo.
Suelle, I love the chocolate, almond and ginger combo - I've been making bars with exactly that blend! :)
That's a fine way to combine those two lovely flavours. Sadly, a large percentage of the people that I know don't like ginger in cakes for some reason. Oh well, all the more for me I suppose.
Looks really beautiful, and a lovely flavour combination.
Looks great! I love the combination of chocolate and ginger. I seem to recall this being quite a dense cake when I made it - the crumb is quite close and compact, but clearly none the worse for that.
This cake looks so good, especially with the chunks of ginger and chocolate running through it. Thanks for entering into We Should Cocoa
Haha, I suppose it was inevitable. It was touch and go as to whether I chose cinnamon or ginger for Christmas last year. In the end I thought I'd hang on to ginger for Christmas this year - hey ho! Your loaf sounds so good, I think you're right, there is plenty going on there and it doesn't sound as though it needs any icing. The crumb is very close, it almost looks like a loaf of bread. Thanks for your continued and much appreciated support of We Should Cocoa and do give me a shout if you ever fancy hosting it.
Foodycat has now got me wanting some stuffed gingery dates.
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