Double chocolate cupcakes

A good chocolate cake is a thing of beauty. These are a halfway house between cupcake and muffin. They are as light as a cupcake but because of the chocolate chips they have the weightiness of a muffin. They look impressive on my shiny new cake stand:

The batter is truly delicious! I defy anybody to resist having a little dip and taste as soon as the cocoa has turned the batter an inviting, rich, chocolate colour. My nephew and trusty sidekick, the Boy Wonder, and I certainly couldn’t resist!

The finished cupcakes crack along the top and are like little chocolate volcanoe:s


They are also a ‘quick make’ as there is no need to add any buttercream; in fact, I think this is a very rare cupcake in that buttercream would be too much.


Delicious warm when the chocolate chips are still soft! The Boy Wonder did a great job making these.

Ingredients:
125g unsalted butter
250g caster sugar
1 tablespoon honey
2 eggs
300g plain flour
75g cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
180ml milk
80g chocolate chips (milk or plain, whichever you prefer. I used milk)

How to make:

- Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan oven 160°C/350°F/Gas mark 4.
- Line two muffin pans with paper cases. I got 20 cupcakes out of this mix.
- Beat the butter, sugar and honey until soft and well combined.
- Beat in the eggs one at a time.
- Weigh out the dry ingredients i.e. the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder and also measure out the milk.
- Beat in half the dry ingredients, followed by half the milk.
- Repeat until all the dry ingredients and the milk are combined into the batter.
- Using a spoon, stir in the chocolate chips.
- Spoon the batter into the paper cases until each case is two-thirds full.
- Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the cupcake comes out clean. Mine took 25 minutes.
- Leave to cool slightly on a wire rack.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.

Guernsey cider cake (Gâche à cidre)

I’m still in the midst of my work travels but snatched some time to bake this cake. Travelling for work eats up time like nothing else, and even when you have free time you mostly can’t do with it what you would like to because you’re not at home! Having said that, there are some plusses and the biggest for me are finding out about the place I’m visiting and enjoying the local shops and markets.

I have spent most of the past two weeks in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, which is part of the Channel Islands. The Islands are a British Crown Dependency but not part of the UK. Geographically they are nearer to France than England. “Enough of the geography”, I hear you shout, “where’s the cake?” Here it is:


In the independent bookshop I found local cookbooks featuring Guernsey traditional recipes. It struck me, on browsing these, that Guernsey has a fondness for apples and cake. Suddenly I felt right at home!


Cider cake caught my attention because I had a hankering for sultanas. In the same way that you soak dried fruit in brandy for a Christmas cake, you soak sultanas in cider for this cake. Here they are sitting in a bath of fizzy cider:


There are options too – the recipe notes that you can bake one large cake or cupcakes. The rustic nature of the ingredients – sultanas, brown sugar, cinnamon etc made me opt for a large cake. I added my twist to the cake, which will probably have the traditionalists seething, with a vanilla custard buttercream topping. A lot of buttercream topping.....


The aroma of the cake whilst cooking deserves a mention! It was a lovely warm appley smell with a hint of spice. It’s what I’d term a rustic, farmhouse-y sort of cake. Much as I love fancy cakes this is the sort of thing that really gets my taste buds salivating!

Here’s the cake fresh from the oven:


Here it is before it got ‘buttercreamed’:


On eating the cake we all agreed that it was the best cake we’d had for a long time...it’s that good! It’s light and moist but also crumbly and oh so comforting. I think it would be delicious without the buttercream but, for my taste, the buttercream added an extra layer of loveliness.


Ingredients:
For the cake:
180g sultanas
150ml dry cider
250g soft brown sugar
180g unsalted butter
Zest of one lemon (optional, I left it out)
2 eggs
250g self raising flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

For the custard buttercream (optional):
150ml milk (whole or semi skimmed)
125g caster sugar
2 egg yolks
175g unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

How to make:

- Soak the sultanas in the cider for at least an hour before making the cake. This will give the sultanas time to absorb some cider and become fat and juicy.
- Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan oven 160°C/350°F/Gas mark 4.
- Line a deep 20cm round cake tin. You can, if you prefer, make cupcakes. I’m not sure how many you will get because I made the 20cm cake.
- Cream together the butter and sugar. This will take quite a while as brown sugar is coarser than caster sugar. Don’t skimp as this is an important stage; using my kitchenaid at a medium speed it took about 10 minutes until I had something light and smooth.
- If you’re using it, add the lemon zest and stir in.
- Beat in the eggs one at a time.
- Fold in the flour and cinnamon.
- Stir in the sultanas and cider. The sultanas won’t completely absorb the cider so make sure you pour in all the cider too!
- Spoon into the prepared tin and bake for approximately 1 hour or until a skewer comes out cleanly. Mine took 1 hour 10 minutes. If you are making cupcakes instead, check after 20 minutes.
- Leave to cool on a wire rack. You can make the cake a day before serving it but I recommend making the buttercream on the day.
- To make the buttercream: place the milk and sugar in a small saucepan and bring to the boil gently, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
- Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl and then pour the milk onto the yolks whisking all the time.
- Return the custard mix to the saucepan and, stirring all the time, cook over a medium heat just until the mixture thickens and coats the back of the spoon. Take your time over this – if you have too fierce a heat your eggs might scramble!
- Pour into a bowl and leave to cool slightly.
- Beat the butter until it is fluffy and light.
- Gradually beat in the now room temperature custard to the butter.
- Finally beat in the vanilla extract.
- Spread over the top of the cake or cupcakes.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.

Crispy chocolate cake

I'm posting early again this week as am off on more travels for work tomorrow. I've been dodging the snow that's dogged the UK so far and hope my luck holds out and my flight is untroubled!

Now - a trip down memory lane. One of the first things we all probably baked as children were chocolate rice crispie or cornflake cakes. Apart from being easy to make, they taste good!


This recipe harks back to early memories of baking but adds some sophistication too. The chocolate rice crispies are used as a topping for a squidgy, indulgent chocolate cake. The whole concoction uses three bars of chocolate – do I have your attention yet?

My one disappointment with making this recipe is that you are meant to use spelt flour. Spelt is an ancient grain that isn’t wheat based, so people with wheat intolerance find they can often eat spelt with no ill effects. It also has a nutty taste. While the recipe (from a UK national Sunday paper) assured me that spelt flour was widely available I couldn’t find it in any health food store, supermarket or even Borough food market. If I lived way out in the sticks I would accept this, but these shops were all in central London! So I used self raising flour and it worked perfectly.


My other, voluntary, substitution was to use good quality milk chocolate instead of the recommended dark. I often find that dark chocolate can be too bitter and, given the low sugar content of this cake, opted for something a little lighter and sweeter. The cocoa content of the chocolate you use will decide how dark your cake will be – as I used milk chocolate mine is a lighter colour.

You will notice that the topping is falling off my cake – if I made the cake again I think I would double up the amount of chocolate for the topping; it didn’t seem enough to bind the rice crispies together.


Ingredients:
For the cake:
150g dark or milk chocolate (I used Green & Blacks milk which has a 34% cocoa content)
120g unsalted butter
3 eggs
30g refined spelt flour (if you can’t find this use self raising flour)
80g caster sugar

For the topping:
150g dark or milk chocolate (I used milk; next time I would use 300g of chocolate)
40g unsalted butter
1 tablespoon golden syrup
50g rice crispies


How to make:

- Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan oven 160°C/350°F/Gas mark 4.
- Grease or line a 20cm springform cake tin.
- Start with the cake: break up the chocolate and melt it along with the butter in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. The water should not touch the bowl.
- Once you have a glossy runny chocolate mix, remove the bowl from the heat and beat in the eggs one at a time. I used an electric hand whisk to make this easier.
- Fold in the flour and sugar.
- Pour – for it will be very runny – into the prepared cake tin and bake for approx 2o minutes or until the cake feels firm in the centre. As it is such a squidgy cake the skewer test won’t really work. Mine took 23 minutes.
- Leave to cool on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes before adding the topping. I made the cake the day before I wanted it and left it untopped. The topping is best eaten on the day made as it starts to go soggy after that.
- Make the topping: break up the chocolate and melt it along with the butter in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. The water should not touch the bowl. Stir until smooth then remove from the heat.
- Stir in the golden syrup.
- Stir in the rice crispies and ensure that all are covered with the chocolate mix.
- Spoon over the top of the cake and spread. Press the crispies down at the edge of the cake to stop them sliding off.
- Allow to cool.
- If you’re using dark high cocoa content chocolate it’s an idea to serve this cake with cream. If you’re using milk chocolate it’s nicest on its own, maybe just some icing sugar dusted on the top.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.

Streusel-topped caramel butter cake

This is what’s colloquially known as a “cut and come again” cake. Try stopping at one piece!


Both the cake and the streusel topping allow the butter and sugar to be the stars of the show. So often these are the work-horse ingredients in cakes but here they really shine. The hit of cinnamon in the streusel is just enough to add depth of flavour but not totally overpowering.



I made the cake, as the recipe stated, in a traybake tin but also think the mix would work very well as individual cupcakes, where you’d obtain more height.

The sponge layer goes into the tin first:


Then is topped with grated streusel:


Simple to make and uncomplicated to eat, this cake is delicious!


Ingredients:
For the cake:
125g unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
110g brown sugar
2 eggs
110g self raising flour
75g plain flour
2 tablespoons milk (whole or semi-skimmed)

For the streusel:
110g plain flour
75g brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
90g unsalted butter

How to make:

- Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan oven 160°C/350°F/Gas mark 4.
- Grease and line a 20cm x 30cm traybake tin. It needs to be at least 2cm deep.
- Start by making the streusel topping: place all the ingredients in a bowl and beat until you can press the mix together into a ball of dough. Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
- Now make the cake. Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla until smooth and fluffy.
- Beat in the eggs on at a time. Add a little of the flour if the batter starts to curdle.
- Fold in half the flour along with 1 tablespoon of milk.
- Fold in the rest of the flour and the remaining tablespoon of milk.
- Spoon the batter into the prepared tin and level.
- Grate the chilled streusel over the top of the cake. Work fast, as the ball of streusel will warm up quickly in your hand. Spread out the streusel so it is distributed evenly over the cake.
- Bake in the oven for approximately 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out cleanly. Mine took exactly minutes.
- Leave to cool in the tin on a wire rack.
- Serve with whipped cream.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.