A Quarter Pounder By Any Other Name

Hmm, ok, maybe the title is a bit misleading, since the photo is clearly showing a cake! This cake is called a four quarter cake in french, and a pound cake in english and it’s so simple, a child can do it.

And a child did, since the big boy was instrumental in bringing you this cake today: his poor little hands replaced the coveted kitchenaid standmixer as he was allowed to hold the whizzing and mixing machine ALL BY HIMSELF, all the while telling me that he was a BIG BOY NOW!

Despite warnings by She Who Shall Not Be Named (my self-appointed blog consultant — you know who you are), that it was a boring cake and recipe, I actually really really like the quatre-quart. It’s simple in taste, you can use it as a replacement for bread at breakfast, have it with tea in the afternoon and use it as backdrop for layered trifles of any kind.

It’s also the perfect recipe for someone who has never baked anything before, because there is no way that you can mess it up! You can also add some vanilla, lemon zest or dried fruit, but then it wouldn’t really be a pound cake anymore, or would it?

Simple Pound Cake

prep time: 10min, baking time: 50 min

mixing bowl, loaf pan

4 eggs
weight of the eggs in butter plus more for the pan
weight of the eggs in sugar
weight of the eggs in flour
half a pack of baking powder (about 7 g)

Preheat the oven to 180° and butter and flour your loaf pan. Mix the butter and the sugar until fluffy and white. Add the eggs one by one with the handmixer still running. Sift the flour and baking powder over the Mix and fold in. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for about 50 min or until a knife inserted in the center stays clean. Let cool in the pan before unmolding. The cake is great warm, cold, the next day and even toasted!

Anybody There?

phsshhht (blows dust+cobwebs of her blog). Hi!
Sorry for not posting, but as I already explained to my 3 readers, our camera was broken, and whats the point of blogging about spareribs, lemon risotto and coffee cake if you have no photos to show for!

My camera is safely back in my hands, and the weekend was spent trying to make up for lost time: we bought a fresh coconut at the market, and I was thus hoping for a cake that would be like a bounty. I didn’t succeed, but the result was crazy nonetheless: behold, the fluffy, cloudy Chocolate-Coconut-Marshmallow Cake
The cake is simple chocolate, filled with marshmallow-coconut-filling and frosted with seven-minute-frosting. It looks very impressive ( If i do say so myself!), and isn’t too heavy, despite the large amounts of sugar. In fact, the cake was gone in two days. Two days, and only gave one piece away to a friend!

Chocolate-Coconut-Marshmallow Cake

for the sponge cake
adapted from Trish Deseine MY CUISINE
prep time: 10min, baking time: 15 min, cooling time: 5-10 min

225 g sugar
225 g butter, softened
4 eggs
225 g flour
2 tsp baking powder
4 Tbsp cocoa powder, diluted in 4 Tbsp hot water

2 25 cm round or square cake tins

Preheat the oven to 180°C. and line your buttered cake pans with parchment paper. In a mixing bowl combine the sugar and butter, mixing until white and fluffy. Add the eggs, mixing well inbetween each one. Sift the flour and baking powder into the bowl and add the cocoa mixture. Mix until just combined.
Divide the batter between the cake tins and bake for 25 minutes or until the cake feels springy to touch and a knife inserted to the center will come out clean. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes then invert unto a rack.

While the cake is cooling off, prepare the marshmallow frosting (also called seven-minute-frosting)

Marshmallow Frosting

1 1/2 cups of sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 egg whites
2 tsp vanilla extract
splash of white vinegar
prep time: 9min, cooling time: 10 min

metal mixing bowl or saucepan, pot of simmering water for a waterbath

Mix all the ingredients together in a metal bowl or saucepan set over a pot of simmering water. With an electric mixer, whip the mixture until the frosting stands in stiff peaks - about 5-7 min. When the right consistency is achieved, take the bowl of the heat and keep whipping until the mixture cools down, about two more min. Let the frosting cool completely for 10 more minutes.

Marshmallow-Coconut-Filling

1 cup of Marshmallow Frosting
1 cup of shredded unsweetened coconut

Mix until combined.

Assembly

Spread the Marshmallow-Coconut-Filling on the first cake and top with the secind one. Set the cake on the plate or stand you want to serve it in. Stick pieces of parchment paper underneath the cake to catch any drips from the frosting. using an offset spatula or a big knife, spread the Marshmallow Frosting all over the cake and sprinkle some shredded coconut on top.
The cake is best eaten cold.

Chocolate Cake on a not so good day

Phew, has it ever been a while since I posted! My lack of posting is not to be attributed to lack of enthusiasm, far from it: We have been staying with my parents for the last month, and most of the cooking has not been done by me. This means that I couldn’t really post anything salty either even though I had been meaning to do it.
Instead, I would like to share with you the highlight of my not so good day: the gateau au chocolat de Marie.

It is very similar to this cake and I believe also this one. In short, it’s a super rich chocolatey, fudgey, buttery chocolate cake. But but but, before you start whining about caloric values and other health risks involved with the consumption of this cake, let me add that this one also boasts extra vitamin c thanks to the addition of orange zest and orange juice. If that’s not healthy, I don’t know what is! Another selling point for this cake is the fact, that it comes together in 30 min, less time than it takes you to get ready for a dinner party! But beware, thatthe chocolatey goodness is at it’s best after a substantial cooling time, or even on the next day.

The recipe for this chocolate cake comes to me courtesy of my aunt Marie, who gave it to my mother. It was the go-to chocolate cake for years, since it’s easy enough that a kid can do it with hardly any help needed. In fact, when I was in high school I used this cake as a trade in for favors: I never had a drivers license, let alone a car so I traded one chocolate cake for one semester of hitching rides to school with some friends!

My aunt herself, had the recipe from my grandmother, a true parisienne if there ever was one. As a young girl, she was trained at the prestigious Ecole du Cordon Bleu as part of her bourgeois upbringing,where she learned to bake this cake at the Cordon Bleu school, and passed it on to her daughter, and her daughter only. She is rather secretive about her recipe, and was none to pleased when she found out that we (my mother, my sister and I) had been using her recipe as well - from her point of view, recipes are not to be shared. OOOPS, my bad!

My sister suggested that I make this cake in order to cheer me up from my not so good day (involving 2 teething twins and a troublesome toddler amongst other things) and as is to be expected with all things chocolate, it totally worked!

Gateau au chocolat de Marie

Family Recipe
Prep Time: 8 min baking time: 22 min

200 g butter
200 g dark chocolate
150 g granulated sugar
4 eggs
zest and juice of 1/2 an orange
1 Tbsp flour

25 cm round or square cake tin

Preheat the oven to 190° and line your buttered cake pan with parchment paper. Melt the chocolate together with the zest and juice of 1/2 an orange. Add the butter and sugar and let it melt with the chocolate
With an electric mixer, mix in the eggs one by one (BTW, does anybody else find it super annoying to add eggs one by one when using a handmixer and NOT a kitchenaid? just saying!) and finally fold in the flour.
Pour the mixture evenly into your cake pan and bake for 22 min, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out slightly moist. The sides of the cake will rise more than the middle. Cool in the pan for 5 min before inverting it onto a plate (safer than a cooling rack, which might break the cake at this point) and letting it cool of completely.
The cake is really good on it’s own or with a coffee. But americans will certainly tell you that it’d be even better with a tall glass of cool milk!

Last Christmas - a log disaster

try making the traditional french bûche de noel while surrounded by 16 people, 7 of which under the age of 7. Add to that a cavalier baker, thinking it will all be done with the flick of a wrist and you get a recipe for disaster. Luckily, in this instance the many cooks saved the proverbial broth and turned what was meant to be a chocolate log filled with raspberry mascarpone cream and slathered in ganache, into a brique de noel, much prettier and equally as delicious as was hoped for.