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.

In Honor of the Upcoming World Nutella Day… Chocolate Pizza and Basic Pizza Dough

Did you know, that there is a World Nutella Day? I read about it on Ms. Adventures in Italy, and I had to applaud the initiative. An entire day to celebrate Nutella is only right and proper!

As a child, we were never allowed to have nutella, which resulted in me developing a lifelong addiction to it - so much so, that one of the first things of my own that I bought when I moved into my own apartment, was a giant jar of nutella. Because I polished it off much too quickly, I have since tried to restrict myself to desperate times only. Hence, the appeal of a World Nutella Day.

I’ve had this recipe in my must-try folder for about a year and it seemed to be just the thing for this celebration: chocolate pizza.

Pizza, Nutella, and more chocolate to top it off sounded like my idea of a good time — but while it did not disappoint, it is not quite the dessert it was said to be. In my opinion, it is much better suited for goûter (the snack that most french children take after school, around 4 pm) or maybe even for a decadent breakfast.

It’s very quick and easy to make, I used my go-to basic pizza dough recipe, nutella and subsituted ribboned orange zest for the hazelnuts which gave it a more refreshing taste.

Basic Pizza Dough

Prep Time: 30 min baking time: 15 min

2/3 cup of lukewarm water
1/ Tbsp active dry yeast (amounts to one envelope)
1 Tsp of sugar
2 cups of flour
1/2 Tsp of salt
3 Tbsp of olive oil

baking sheet

In a mixing bowl, mix the water, yeast and sugar together and set aside in a warm place until bubbles form at the surface (5 min)
Add the flour, salt and olive oil to the yeast-preparation and beat with the wirehooks of your handmixer until an elastic dough forms (5 min). You can of course mix the dough by hand, but it will take about 5x longer.
When the dough has come together, roll it into a ball in the mixing bowl, cover with a teatowel and let it rise in a warm place until doubled in size (20 min).
Preheat the oven to 200° and line your baking sheet with parchment paper.
You will have enough dough for either 4 small pizzas, 2 medium sized ones, or one big one. If you are making pizza, proceed to top the rolled out dough with the topping of your choice and bake for about 20 min.

Chocolate Pizza

Prep Time: 2 min baking time: 22 min

1 Tbsp of melted butter
about 1/4 cup of Nutella or to taste
2 Tbsp white chocolate chunks
1/2 cup of dark chocolate chunks
1 Tbsp of orange zest

baking sheet

When your dough is done and rolled out into the desired size, prick it with a fork and brush the top with the melted butter. Bake it in the oven until golden and baked through - for about 15 min
When the pizza is done, take it out of the oven and spread it with your choice amount of nutella. Sprinkle the chocolate chunks and the orange zest on top. Bake it in the oven for another 2 min, or until all the chocolate has melted. Serve warm.

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!

My ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, or how to be yet another boring foodblogger

Chocolate chip cookies have got to be one of the items on my list of top ten favorite things to eat. Since they are pretty much THE north american cookie of choice, there are already numerous blogposts on them and everybody claims to have found the ultimate recipe for the most perfect chewy/crispy/meltey cookie ever.

Well… what can I say, so have I!! Maybe I will win an award for being the millionth (aspiring) foodblogger to post a chocolate chip cookie recipe on their blog!

My recipe comes from the classic Fanny Farmer cookbook that my husband brought with him from Canada on his move to Europe. It was given to him by his grandmother and has never failed me as a cookbook for classic north american food. This recipe is a great base for cookie dough, since you can tweak the add-on ingredients (oats and chocolate chip) and replace them by whatever strikes your pantry: nuts, raisins, cranberries, orange zest (Note to self: must try orange zest+chocolate chips!)

So without further ado let me introduce MY ultimate

Chocolate Chip Oat Cookies

Adapted from theFanny Farmer Cookbook
Prep Time: 15 min baking time: 8-10 min

½ cup (115 g) butter
½ cup dark brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
1 egg
¾ teaspoon vanilla (optional)
1 1/8 cup 155 g flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking soda
1 cup uncooked oats
1 cup chocolate chips (I used half dark, half milk chocolate)*

Makes about 40 cookies

Preheat the oven to 190C° and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Cream the butter, then add the two sugars, beating incorporated. Or simply soften the butter together with the sugar in the microwave, mix to combine.** Beat in the egg and vanilla.
Mix in the flour, salt, and baking soda blending well. Stir in the oats and the chocolate chips.

Drop dough by teaspoonfuls - or roll into teaspoonfull sized balls - on to the cookie sheets about 2 cm apart and bake for 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned.

* I use chunks of chocolate rather then chips, since chocolate chips are a rare commodity in my part of the world
* *I prefer this method since it’s faster, and the cookies don’t really need the extra air from the creaming of butter and sugar, since unlike cake, they don’t have to become light and fluffy….

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.