Chilli and Orange Chocolate Cake

This is one of my favourite chocolate cakes when I want something a bit special, but not too rich. It's lighter than a flourless mousse torte, because it does contain flour and raising agents, but it's richer and denser than a simple chocolate sponge cake. The flavour combination of chocolate, chilli and orange is perfect too, so although the cake could probably be made as a plain chocolate cake, or by adding different flavouring ingredients, this is the version I always make.

The recipe for this Chilli and Orange Chocolate Cake comes from Sam Stern, and dates back to when he was a school boy. He's now graduated from University and has several cookery books to his name, specialising in recipes for school children and students.

The only change I make to the cake recipe is to use cayenne or pure chilli powder. I have tried pounding chilli flakes in a pestle and mortar and almost choked on the inhaled dust (even though I couldn't see it)! Rather than use either of Sam's recommended frostings, I add a smaller amount of a fudgy frosting made from one of Mary Berry's recipes - melt 90g plain chocolate with 30g butter, then beat in 1 tablespoon of golden syrup and 1 1/2 tablespoons of milk. Cool a little and pour on top of the cake, while it will still run, to cover the top easily. If you want it to run down the sides, to coat the cake completely, make double the amount and use straight away.

I added a few chocolate and sugar sprinkles, just to make it look a little more interesting, but decoration isn't really necessary.

Rhubarb and Ginger Polenta Cake

Gluten-free & Dairy-free

This is a recipe I've been using for years - two layers of shortcake-style dough enclosing some fresh fruit. I usually make it with butter and SR flour, but wanted to see whether the recipe worked if it was made both gluten- and dairy-free. I decided to use polenta in place of 1/3 of the flour, as in this Nigel Slater recipe, a commercial brand of gluten-free flour and a non-dairy spread instead of butter.

This recipe works well with any type of fresh fruit filling, but something like rhubarb, which releases a lot of liquid during cooking, needs to be cooked first, then drained. I roasted 500g of rhubarb (the first of the season, incidently), cut into 4cm lengths, with about 50g of sugar; you might need more sugar if you don't like really sharp fruit.

Ingredients
150g caster sugar
150g non-dairy spread, suitable for baking
100g polenta (I only had the instant kind)
200g gluten-free plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 large egg
500g sweetened cooked rhubarb, drained of cooking juices
3 balls of stem ginger, finely chopped

Method
My usual method is to melt the butter, then stir in the sugar and egg, then lastly add the flour, but I didn't think this would work as well with the non-dairy spread. Instead I followed the method in Nigel's recipe, which is to put all the dry ingredients into a bowl, rub in the fat, then mix to a sticky dough with the egg. The gluten-free flour and polenta made a much stickier dough than usual, which was almost too soft to work with - next time I think I'll add another 25g of flour.

Pre-heat the oven to 180C.
Once mixed, 2/3 of the dough is spread over the base of a 20cm springform tin, which has been greased and base-lined with baking parchment. The dough needs to be worked up the sides of the tin to make a wall about 2cm high.
Spread the fruit onto the base, packing it closely together but leaving the 'wall' uncovered.
Sprinkle the chopped stem ginger over the rhubarb, then drop the remaining dough on top of the the fruit in small teaspoonsful, starting at the edges and working inwards. Use the spoon to flatten and spread the dough as much as possible, but it isn't necessary to completely cover the fruit.
(The method of assembling the cake is covered in more detail, and with photographs, in this post.)
Bake for about 55 minutes until the cake is golden and feels solid. Cool in the tin.
The cake can be served warm but this gluten-free version is quite fragile, so I'd recommend serving at room temperature.

If liked, the top can be sprinkled with flaked almonds or demerara sugar before baking, or the cooled cake can be dusted with icing sugar before serving. As I mentioned earlier, almost any fruit can be used as a filling - sliced apples and a handful of sultanas, for instance, or sliced plums - and complimentary spices can be used in the dough, rather than ginger.

Rhubarb and ginger is a classic combination which worked well in this cake. There was just a hint of ginger in the cake dough, but the stem ginger in the filling was more pronounced and added an extra texture too, along with the graininess of the polenta. This cake was softer and more fragile than the same cake made with the usual ingredients, but I was pleased with how well the 'conversion' to a gluten- and dairy-free version turned out.

Cauliflower and Apple Cake

If your first thought on reading this post title is 'Why?', then I have to say that was my reaction too! Why use cauliflower in a cake?  The recipe featured in April's edition of Waitrose Food magazine as 'Dish of the Month' and comes from award-winning patissier and chocolatier Will Torrent. The introduction says that although baking with cauliflower may seem unusual, it works well with the flavours of apple, white chocolate and coconut. I discussed the recipe with a group of internet friends and the general opinion was that, although the photo of the cake looked attractive, using cauliflower in a sweet cake didn't sound very pleasant. I decided to take up the challenge!

The recipe is based on using a food processor, which I don't have, so I had to adapt the method a little. I also didn't want a layer cake, so baked the cake in a larger tin, and used 2/3 of the buttercream in the recipe, just as a topping

Ingredients
150g unsalted butter, softened, plus a little extra for greasing
150g cauliflower, in small florets
150g caster sugar
2 small braeburn apples, grated (I used 1 1/2 large apples and peeled and cored them, although the recipe doesn't specify peeling.)
2 eggs (mine were large)
175g plain flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
50g sultanas
50g desiccated coconut

*Buttercream (the amounts I used):
50g white chocolate, chopped
100g unsalted butter, softened
110g icing sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
extra cinnamon (optional)
25g toasted desiccated coconut optional)

**My Method
Grease and base line a 20cm springform tin.
Simmer the cauliflower in boiling water for 16 minutes until very soft, cool under a running tap then drain, and dry on layers of kitchen towel.
Pre-heat oven to 180C, gas 4.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and cinnamon.
Process the cauliflower and grated apple in a small food processor to make a purée.
In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar until well combined, then beat in the eggs, one at a time, with a tablespoonful of the flour mixture.
On the slowest mixer speed (or by hand) mix in the cauliflower and apple purée and the rest of the flour mixture.
Lastly, fold in the sultanas and coconut by hand.
Transfer the batter to the baking tin, level the surface and bake for about 45 minutes, until a test probe comes out clean. Cover after 35 minutes if it's getting too brown.
Cool in the tin for 15 minutes then transfer to a wire rack.
For the buttercream, melt the white chocolate with 25g of the butter and the milk, in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water, stirring occasionally until smooth, then cool slightly. Meanwhile beat the rest of the butter, the icing sugar and the vanilla extract together until light and fluffy. Beat in the chocolate mixture, then spread the frosting over the cake. Decorate, if desired, with a light dusting of cinnamon and some toasted coconut.

**The food processor method was to first chop the cauliflower into small pieces, then pulse in the butter, sugar and apple. Gradually add the beaten eggs before sifting in the flour, cinnamon and raising agents. Pulse to combine, then fold in the sultanas and coconut. 
The original cake was baked in a 18cm tin for 45-55 minutes, then split in half when cooled. 

*A larger amount of frosting was made by melting the 75g white chocolate on it's own and stirring it into a buttercream made from 150g butter, 175g icing sugar, 1 1/2 tablespoons milk and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, and used to sandwich and top the cake layers. I couldn't bring myself to melt the chocolate on it's own as I always have trouble melting white chocolate - hence my method of adding some of the butter and the milk to stop it getting too hot and seizing.

The result really surprised me! This odd assortment of ingredients produced a delicious, moist and incredibly light textured cake with a delicate cinnamon flavour. I couldn't taste either the apples or the cauliflower at all (fortunately, perhaps!) and even the coconut didn't come through strongly. The cake wasn't over-sweet, which meant that the very sweet white chocolate and vanilla frosting was a nice counterbalance to the cake. The one disconcerting note about the cake was that although I couldn't taste it in the raw batter or finished cake, there was a strong smell of cauliflower while the cake was baking!

Perhaps it was the subtle blending of all the ingredients which produced such a surprisingly tasty cake, but I think I'm still asking the question of why the cauliflower was used at all? Apart from the novelty value of telling people that there's cauliflower in the cake (and I didn't tell my husband until after he'd eaten it) the only reason I can come up with it that the apples and cauliflower add bulk, and perhaps moisture, but not so many calories. A similar sized cake would normally use more sugar, butter and egg.

Date and Tahini Slice

The randomly chosen letter for this month's AlphaBakes is T, although it's not that random, as we are nearing the end of the alphabet again, and T was one of only two letters left on this run-through. It's another strange letter when it comes to ingredients, as initial thoughts are that T must be easy, but then you look through recipe books to find that there aren't that many baking ingredients, or recipe names, beginning with T. Some of my books didn't have anything at all listed under T in the index, and others only had 'Triple....' or 'Toasted....' or similar descriptive words. Treacle cropped up quite a lot too, but I wasn't in the mood for anything too dark and sticky.

In the end, I decided to use Tahini, but it took me ages to find something that I really wanted to make, once I'd made that decision. I looked at cakes, cookies and flapjacks before I remembered that good old Australian word - slice - and came across this recipe, which seemed to use a good mix of  fruit and spices. It looked fairly healthy too - no added fat - until I read the nutritional information on the jar of tahini, and realised that sesame seeds contain nearly 60% fat, so using 185mls of tahini adds about 100g of fat to the recipe!

It's a simple recipe to follow, especially as metric weights are give alongside the cup measurements, but my cake batter was more like a cookie dough. I'm not sure whether this is down to different brands of ingredients being used, as well as desiccated coconut instead of shredded, or a fault in the recipe. I added a couple of tablespoons of milk, but it didn't make things much better. I gave the slice an extra 5 minutes baking time, to colour the coconut slightly, and be sure it was cooked through - a test at 20 minutes still looked a little damp.

The slice was pleasant to eat, and the flavours of dates, coconut and sesame seeds blended together well, but the amount of ground ginger used was hardly noticeable! The slice was more like a cookie in texture, but that made it a bit too dry for it's depth. Unfortunately, this wasn't something I'll be rushing to make again, although it might have worked better as a bar cookie, cooked in a larger baking tin, or even chilled and rolled into balls of dough to make conventional cookies.

AlphaBakes is co-hosted by Ros, at The More Than Occasional Baker and Caroline at Caroline Makes, who is this month's host. The basic idea is to use the chosen letter as the first letter of a major ingredient or part of the name of the dish which is made eg T is for Tiger Bread, or in my case, T is for Tahini. Full rules can be found here.

Courgette, Sultana and Pistachio Loaf

I managed to make one more recipe from Honey and Co: The Baking Book, before the library demanded it back from me. It was down to a choice between this courgette loaf and a carrot cake, and the courgette loaf won because I had all the ingredients already (allowing for a couple of substitutions).

I used sultanas instead of golden raisins, and orange zest instead of lemon, neither of which were going to have a major affect on the flavour of the cake. I also chopped the pistachios roughly, as I dislike whole nuts in cakes.

I didn't really encounter any problems while making the cake, although both the loaf recipes I've made from the book have almost filled my 2lb loaf tin, leaving me worried (needlessly, fortunately) about cake batter ending up on the floor of the oven.

This cake was moist and dense but not too heavy. The pistachios, sultanas and flecks of green from the courgettes made it quite colourful, and the chewy sultanas and crunchy pistachios gave some variations in texture while eating. However, once again, it was the spices used that made this cake something special - star anise and ginger, combined with the citrus zest, gave a really unusual sharp and peppery flavour, which was balanced nicely by the sweetness of the sultanas.

Cherry Pithiviers

I've wanted to make this recipe since I saw Rick Stein make it on his French Odyssey TV series, and that was back in 2005. It wasn't until I was planning my Easter cooking, and around the same time noticed large jars of reasonably priced Morello cherries in Aldi, that a plan fell into place. Rick's recipe uses fresh cherries, but they aren't in season yet and I couldn't see any reason why preserved cherries wouldn't work.

This is more of an assembly job than an exercise in cookery skills - ready made puff pastry, a jar of cherries, a simple frangipane paste - but there are still obstacles to perfection. I fell at the last hurdle, and made a mess of the traditional pithiviers markings on top of the pie, but overall I was really pleased with how the dessert turned out.

I used ready-rolled sheets of all-butter puff pastry, which was all that was available when I was shopping. This made assembly even easier - one sheet was rolled slightly thinner so that I could cut a 29cm disc, and the second sheet was just the right size to cut out a 25cm disc for the base.

While the pastry discs chilled for 20 minutes, I made a frangipane paste from 125g softened butter, 125g caster sugar,  1 medium egg and 1 medium egg yolk, 125g ground almonds, 15g plain flour and 2 tablespoons kirsch. Into this I mixed 225g very well-drained Morello cherries, without stones.

The pastry base was placed on a baking sheet covered with baking parchment, and the cherry frangipane mixture was heaped on and spread out to leave a 2.5 cm border of pastry. This border was brushed with an egg wash made from an egg yolk and a teaspoon of water, then the top layer of pastry was carefully placed on top. At this point it's necessary to exclude as much air as possible, seal the two layers of pastry together then crimp around the edges of the pie - a little tricky, and the top pastry may need trimming if it has stretched during handling. Once this assembly was complete, the pie was chilled again for 20 minutes.

After chilling, the pie was brushed with egg wash and the traditional arcing cuts were put on top. It's important to egg wash first, then mark with the tip of a sharp knife. If you cut first, the egg wash will seal up the cuts and they won't open during baking to give the markings you need. It's also important just to mark the surface of the pastry and not cut right through. (I just couldn't get the cuts right - after the second cut I could see I was already going wrong, so I just did the best I could, filling any large gaps with odd short cuts. Rick Stein says in his book that he couldn't do it correctly either!)

Finally, cut a small hole in the centre of the pie and place in a 220C oven for 15-20 minutes, until the pastry has risen and turned golden. After this time reduce the temperature to 180C and cook for another 40 minutes, covering loosely with foil if it's getting too dark. (The published recipe is a bit unclear at this point - it says bake for 40 minutes, but doesn't say whether this is a total of 40 minutes from the start of baking, or whether it's 40 minutes after the initial 20. I checked a few blog recipes and they all gave an extra 40 minutes (a total of about an hour) so I did that too.) You can test the frangipane with a probe, if you like and if it's dry, remove the pie from the oven sooner, but I didn't find the probe test very helpful.

Traditionally, pithiviers are sprinkled lightly with icing sugar (you only need a teaspoonful), then returned to a 220C oven for a few minutes to caramelise the sugar and give a glazed look. I had something else in the oven and couldn't turn up the heat, so flashed the sugared pithiviers under a hot grill to glaze it.

This is best eaten warm or at room temperature, on the day it's made. I kept mine for three days, and although it still tasted good, the pastry didn't stay as crisp as when freshly baked. This was a really delicious version of the traditional pithiviers, which only uses frangipane paste. Cherries pair really well with almonds, and the soft frangipane and crisp pastry gave a good combination of textures. It was really odd to see the pastry puff up so much around the edge of the pie, so that the domed raw pie came out of the oven as a flat disc. I was happy using preserved cherries - I wonder now how much liquid would have come out of raw cherries, and if that would have made the frangipane too sloppy?