A plethora of desserts – chocolate fondants and white chocolate and cranberry cake

I have a very sweet tooth, which I’m trying to keep in check, but that is a post for another day. I fell off the wagon this weekend when the family was over, and I made three desserts – I really like having a selection to choose from.

My SiL is allergic to cinnamon, so she couldn’t eat the red fruit and apple crumble I made. She loves chocolate fondants, so I decided to try making some for her, which gave me the opportunity to test out some new molds I’d bought. Aaaand dessert #3 came in as I figured the kids wouldn’t eat either the crumble or the fondants, so I made a white chocolate and cranberry cake for them. Well, in the end, only the adults ate the cake, the kids were the biggest consumers of the fondants and only four portions of crumble went.

Felicity Cloake did the legwork on the fondant recipe – this is from her ‘perfect’ series. I doubled it to make four. This recipe makes two.

60g butter
1 tablespoon of cocoa powder
60g dark chocolate
1 egg and 1 egg yolk
60g caster sugar
1 tablespoon of plain flour

Heat your oven to 200°. Grease the inside of 2 small ramekins or pudding molds, and then put the cocoa in one and turn it to coat the inside, holding it over the second mold to catch any that escapes. Do the same with the other mold.

Put the butter and chocolate into a heatproof bowl set over, but not touching, a pan of simmering water and stir occasionally until melted. Allow to cool slightly.

Whisk the egg, yolk, sugar and a pinch of salt until pale and fluffy. Gently fold in the melted chocolate and butter, and then the flour. Spoon into the prepared molds, stopping just shy of the top – at this point the mixture can be refrigerated until needed, or even frozen, as the puddings will not wait around once cooked.

Put on to a hot baking tray and cook for 12 minutes (14 if from cold, 16 if frozen) until the tops are set and coming away from the sides of the molds. Leave to rest for 30 seconds and then serve in the ramekins or turn out on to plates if you're feeling confident – they're great with clotted cream or plain ice cream.

Chocolate fondant - still in the mold

The cake I made was the one we tasted at the last Clandestine Cake Club. I used this recipe – here is the UK/gram equivalent. It actually looks really festive, so it would be great for a Christmas party. It looks as good as it tastes too.

Cranberry and white chocolate cake

For the jam

350g of fresh cranberries

150g sugar

the rid and juice of an orange

a teaspoon each of ground ginger and cinnamon

a couple of cloves – just remember how many you put in

(if all this is too much, just use a jar of cranberry jam – Carrefour does a delicious cherry, cranberry and red currant (I think…) jam)

For the cake

225g of white chocolate

300g of plain flour

a small sprinkle of salt

140g of soft butter

270g of castor sugar

4 eggs

a good teaspoon of vanilla – I use a jar I got in Ireland of Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Bean Paste. I’ve seen the same brand, but not the vanilla, in the International Home of Cooking at Rue Léopold 3, 1000 Brussels (its near Sterling Books).

A good dash of milk

For the icing

170g white chocolate

100g of soft butter

50g icing sugar

another good teaspoon of vanilla

You start off by making the filling. In a saucepan, mix all the filling ingredients for it and bring to the boil. Once boiling, simmer for 10 minutes and then remove from the heat. Once its cool enough to not scald yourself on, go through it and fish out all the cloves you added. Then, whizz it through a food processor for a few seconds.

For the cake, melt the chocolate in a bowl over some boiling water until it is fully melted.

Pop your oven on to 190° and grease and line two 20cm cake tins.

In another bowl, beat the butter with the sugar until light n fluffy and its gone white, or at least a lot paler. This will take about 5-7 minutes of mixing. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well between each addition and add the vanilla with the last egg. Finally, mix though the flour, baking powder and salt until it’s just about combined and then mix though the melted chocolate. If your mixture is a bit thick, add a few dessertspoons of milk to loosen it. It should be the consistency of honey.

Spread the batter into the prepared cake tins.

Bake for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick or skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Cool the cakes in their tins on wire racks for 10 minutes before removing them and cooling completely.

The vanilla bean paste I use

For the icing, melt the white chocolate in a bowl over boiling water. Leave it to cool for about 20 minutes (I didn’t pay attention to this, and added the warm chocolate to the rest of the icing, and well, the whole lot curdled. Bin!). Even after 20 minutes, it hadn’t started solidifying again, so no worries in that department.

In a large bowl, beat the butter, vanilla and the icing sugar until fluffy. When the chocolate is cool, mix it through the icing.

To construct the cake, slice each of the cakes in half horizontally and slather the jam on layer 1, put the other half on, slather that, then layer 3 – more jam – and then the lid of the cake. I only covered the top of the cake with the icing.

Something for the summer – key lime pie

This is quite a rich, quick, no cook pie, brilliantly offset by the bitter lime juice. There are a couple of things I’d change for next time, so read until the end! If you happen to have the ingredients lying around, it is the type of thing you could knock up if you were having some impromptu guests or if by some miracle, summer arrives. It is very rich, so you will get 10 portions out of it.

Key lime pie: yummy, heavy on the calories and could be greener

Take 375g biscuits (I used ginger nuts) and crush them in either a food processor or in a bag with a rolling pin.

Melt 150g of butter in a pot and mix the crushed biscuits through it. Squash this into a loose-bottomed 23cm cake tin and put it in the fridge while you get on with the filling.

Zest and juice 8 limes – I got about 350ml of juice from the ones I used. In a large bowl, mix 570ml of full fat cream and a 397g tin of condensed milk. Whisk these together with the lime juice for a couple of minutes and pour it on top of your biscuit base. Chill this for a couple of hours.

Next time: I made this in individual ramekins as I was a bit terrified of getting the cake out of the tin, even if it’s loose bottomed. I thought the buttery biscuits were a bit of an overkill, so I’d make the filling and serve it with the crushed biscuits sprinkled over it or, as I’d used individual dishes, put the un-buttery biscuits in the base, as they will absorb some of the liquid from the filling and the crumbs will stick to it. Or don’t crush the biscuits, and serve a couple of whole biscuits with the filling for people to dip or spread as they like. Finally, the filling’s colour was off-white, which was lovely, but I’d think about adding a drop or two of green food colouring just to pep it up a bit.

I should add that this recipe is from the BBC food website. 

Squishy, squidgy, gooey chocolate cake

Heaven and sinful indulgence collide in this little slice of decadence. It is very impressive to look at but it’s deceivingly simple to make; pretty much melt, fold and cook.

Squishy chocolate cake

THAT squishy

250g of unsalted butter

150g of chocolate with 70% cocoa solids

100g of chocolate with 50% cocoa solids

300g of light brown sugar

6 eggs, separated with the yolks lightly beaten and the whites beaten until they form peaks

cream to serve

Pop your oven on to 150° Celsius and grease and line a 23cm cake tin, preferably something that has a loose bottom. The cake is very squishy and won’t appreciate being turned out of a tin. If you don’t have a loose bottomed tin, cut a couple of long strips from baking paper and lay these across the bottom of your tin, letting the long ends hang over the edges so you can use them as handles for getting the cake out.

You’ve to melt the butter and chocolate. How you do this is up to you. A couple of suggestions are:

1. If you are feeling brave, put the butter and the chocolate into a saucepan with the sugar and about 20ml of water. Heat all of these gently over a low heat until they are all melted and the sugar is dissolved. Keep a very close eye on it and try not to let the chocolate be in direct contact with the heat (so put the butter in first to form a barrier between the bottom of the pot and the chocolate). If your chocolate gets too hot too quickly, it can burn or split.   
2. Heat the sugar and water in a saucepan until they are bubbling and then pour this over the chocolate and butter (which are in a bowl) and stir them all until they are combined.
3. Put the chocolate and the butter in a bowl that fits snuggly on top of a pot. Pour some water into the pot and with the bowl on top of it, heat the water over a medium heat until the butter and the chocolate melt. 

Cool the mixture down a little and stir through the egg yolks until they are thoroughly mixed into the chocolate mixture.

Spoon a spoonful of the egg whites through the chocolaty mixture.  Then fold through about half the rest until it is well combined, and then fold through the rest of the egg whites. Why should you do this in stages? I think that if you fold through the whole lot in one go, you’re more likely to knock the air out of your carefully beaten whites and end up with a flatter cake. If you do it in stages, the first spoonful helps loosen the mixture; the second loosens it further and the third folds through easier and therefore keeps its bubbles and makes the cake rise more.

Once your batter is ready to go, pour it into your prepared tin and carefully put it in the centre of your hot oven. Carefully cos you don’t want to knock more of the air out of it by banging it around the place! Your cake should take about 50 minutes to bake, but check this by inserting a metal skewer into the centre. If it comes out clean, your cake is done. Remove it from the oven and leave it to cool in the tin on a wire rack. The cake should collapse (fall back down on itself) a bit.

Once it’s fully cooled, remove it from the tin and serve with whipped cream. 

So, over to you, did you make this cake? Is this recipe amongst your top choices for a chocolate cake? What other sorts of cakes do you like to bake (and eat)?

I got the recipe from the February/March 2013 edition of Delicious magazine.