Dairy free baking - Chocolate & chilli olive oil cake

It's safe to say that between Slimming World and being dairy free I miss cake. I mentioned on Twitter last weekend that I fancied chocolate cake and lovely Jules of Butcher Baker suggested Nigella's chocolate olive oil cake. And what a good suggestion it was. Rich, yet light with a massive chocolate kick - you only needed a small slice (which is a godsend for the diet) to really feel like you'd had a good pudding. Sadly I had to foist a fair amount off on M's parents as otherwise in all likelihood I'd have been found face down in it at some point during the week.

Of course I made some changes to Nigella's recipe, because... well I'm a foodie.

Chocolate olive oil cake - serves 12

150ml olive oil - not extra virgin as the taste would be too strong
50grams cocoa powder
125ml recently boiled water
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon of chilli flakes, crushed with a pestle and mortar
100g plain flour
25g custard powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt
200g caster sugar
3 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees and line the base of a 20cm cake tin - I used one with a loose bottom
In a jug mix up the water, vanilla and cocoa powder until you get a runny paste - pop to one side for now
 Beat the sugar, olive oil and eggs until foamy - I did this for about 5 minutes on a low speed (the baby was asleep and the higher speeds seem to register with him and wake him up)
Turn the speed right down, and beat in the cocoa paste, and then the flour, custard powder, bicarb, crushed chilli flakes and salt
Pour the cake batter into the tin, and bake for 35 minutes - until a skewer comes out clean
Leave to cool, and when popped out of the tin, serve as a pudding (I had it with raspberries - and I bet Oatly creamy oat would be fabulous), or with tea for a fancy threesies. 

M's Mars Bar cake

As regular readers (or Readers) will know, it was recently M's birthday - but between the stresses and strains of moving house(s), the whirling dervish that was the Olympics, repeated trips to Ikea, and the Simple Summer Essentials I've been working my way through, poor M's birthday cake has taken rather a back seat. For which I'm truly sorry.

We have planned a picnic for tomorrow, a trip to the Heath to hopefully enjoy the sunshine, some relaxation and each other's company. We do seem to be afflicted by the 'ships that pass in the night' curse as I'm either working away, or M's leaving early/ working late and I'm asleep. So tomorrow will not only be just a pleasant way to spend a sunny summer's day, but also for us some much needed and much cherished time together. And what other justification do I need to bake a cake?

I had a look through my *cough*far too many*cough* cookbooks and oddly was uninspired by the creative and complicated recipes that abounded within their pages. I realised I wanted something simple, (quick and easy as I was making it before leaving for work) that M would love.

M can't eat dark chocolate - one of the first things I made him was chocolate truffles; amazing dark chocolate, spiked with amaretto, which he kindly accepted and then 'shared' (gave to) his parents. Dark chocolate makes him feel terribly poorly, much as white chocolate does me. So that leaves one sort of cake - milk chocolate. As tempting as Nigella's Chocolate cake for the broken hearted was, I couldn't help but feel it was, infact tempting fate to make it for this sort of occaision. So I opted for a simple cake that I invented to make at Uni as frequently as funds and ovens would allow. It's based around a basic chocolate sponge (so uses the 4:4:2 ratio with a small amount of the flour substituted for cocoa powder) but with added chopped up chocolate bar pieces and a rather decadent (or so it seemed at the time) icing! It uses chopped up chocolate bars because I could buy them from the union shop and they were shockingly a lot lot cheaper than a similar weight of chocolate chips.

By the way, would you be at all shocked if I said I made this in the K-mix? Didn't think so! I used to do it by hand easily, but was just too lazy at 8am this morning.

M's belated birthday Mars Bar Cake

Cake

Half a pack of butter - leave out on the countertop to soften
4oz soft, dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract (I used to use essence when I was at uni)
1 tablespoon cocoa powder made up to 4oz with self raising flour
1 Mars bar, chopped up

Icing

2 Mars bars, melted
1 Mars bar, fridge cold
1oz butter
2oz soft, dark brown sugar

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C, and grease a 7 inch cake tin. You can line it, but this cake doesn't seem to need it, alternatively dust the greased tin with cocoa powder as you would usually use flour. This prevents a white cast on the baked cake

Cream butter and sugar together until well mixed
Add both eggs and the vanilla and mix again
Sift in cocoa powder and flour mixture
Mix again until you have a thick batter - you're looking for dropping consistency
Chop a mars bar into small pieces (just bigger than chocolate chips) and gently stir into the cake batter
Bake in the prepeated oven for 25 - 30 minutes

Take your cake out and leave it to cool on a wire rack. Once it's cool, make the icing

Chop 2 of the mars bars into relatively small pieces, and melt with the butter in a bowl over a pan of simmering water.
Beat in the sugar until you get a smooth icing
Cover the cake with this and leave to cool
Once cooled top with slices of the final Mars bar

We'll be taking big slices of this on the picnic tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for good weather!

Everybody's got to have a ... list

Have I mentioned we're moving soon? No? Are you sure? Not, here or here even? Do you even go here?

Well we are. Excited as I am. And please take the proliferation of exclamation marks in those posts as indication of just how excited that is, it does mean that I'm having to make lists. Lots of lists. And some spreadsheets. It's a geek's dream. Fifty shades for a listmaker like myself. Would it be bad form to tag this post with Fifty shades to drive some traffic? OK then *chastened* *sniggers*

So, this post is my list of things I want to bake soon. Where the recipe comes from another blogger, I've linked. Where it's an 'in my head and I kind of want to play around with it' idea it's, funnily enough, not linked.

Jules' 40 garlic clove chicken

• This is at the top of the list because I'm going to get this done this weekend. Don't mention the amount of garlic to M. He will: Freak. Out. As he just doesn't get the effect of cooking down garlic cloves. Well, not yet anyway. With roasties (well there has to be an upside to this weather after all)

The Fabulous Baker brothers Pulled Pork

• I heartily adore my slow roasted shoulder of pork, but wanted to try something different. On my last trip to New York *sigh* I ate pulled pork twice and loved every bite. I'm ashamed to say it's taken me this long to remember that I wanted to try making it, and remembered this recipe from the recent series on Channel 4. Again I am pretty sure that M will adore this,  moving weekend as people can make up rolls with it in as and when they want to eat. So I'll be cooking it the night before. Or something.

Also Jules' ode to Heston's Cauli Macaroni and cheese *throws diet out of the window*

• No I'm not throwing the diet out of the window, but that doesn't mean this isn't on my list. I also know it's the work of the devil, but I'm prepared to face my demons. At least once. And then reinstate it back to the work of the devil if I don't like it. Deal?

Nigella's Dense chocolate loaf cake - I've made this previously and it's gone down really well and I want to make something nice for my colleagues for our next team meeting. I'm contemplating adding cream cheese to it in some way. Maybe through the middle or just as a frosting, sharpened somewhat with lemon juice.

 I've clipped a recipe for a black bean chilli - I normally make chilli con carne in a variation of an oldish Jamie Oliver one, but this sounded lovely - I think it was a Delicious recipe at some point, but I've scribbled on it and stuck it in to my recipes book. I think as well to go with it, I'm going to get M to make cornbread, studded with sweetcorn and maybe some green chilli.

Dhaal. My dad used to make dhaal when he - or anyone else - was poorly. It was up there with dippy eggs as a cure-all. I haven't got a recipe as such, but notes from other people's recipes and the knowledge of what I do like - garlic, ginger and chilli. And what I don't. Fenugreek I'm looking at you.

Two other mains type recipes I'm thinking about:

• A simple seared trout recipe. I picked up some lovely trout fillets that were reduced recently and I want to blog just how quick and easy fish can be to cook. I might skin it too. Again, pictures will be included if I do.

• Pasta al Forno - this was a recipe I got from Discover the Origin which was about PDO (Products of Designated Origin) products, that focussed on European ones. I was sad there were no English recipes in there, but the recipe I have uses Parma Ham and Parmigiano-Regianno and looked gorgeous, so I'm desperate to try it.

Something to do with the Olympic torch - we're taking the Guides and Brownies to see the torch as it travels through our town and I'd like to make something special for them. I'm thinking of frosting cupcakes in the colours of the Olympic rings, or maybe making sugar cookies and colouring icing to top them. Or something?

Bread. Ohmygoodness how I've missed making bread - I want to make milk bread again and see if I can resuscitate the starter of doom.

Preserves - the strawberry crop this year has meant that once again I've not got to go to a Pick Your Own. Never people! Never! I had a deprived childhood. And adulthood it would seem. So strawberry jam has been missed, but I'm planning to take full advantadge of the sloes, elderberries, and blackberries for gin, cordial and apple and blackberry jelly.

I want to try more flavoured alcohol, so am planning on picking up whatever Sainsos have reduced until they're as cheap as possible to add to their Basics vodka/ gin as so far it's an infallible combination.

More Fish and Family recipes. This week is mackerel, and next week is going to be poached, smoked haddock (sadly dyed). After that my plan is to improve on the horrible seafood pasta I had at ASK tonight. It won't be hard. And seafood counts as fish? Yes?

So for now that's my list... I reserve the right to add to it/ change it at any point!