Chocolate Cake in a Mug

This should have been a photo of the cake but it all went rather quickly at work

Yes you read that right. Cake you make in a mug. It’s not a new thing but I’ve finally tried it and it’s a success. The main thing is eating it when it’s warm as it doesn’t cool down well. You’ll also need a really big mug as it does rise up and can spill over or instead just divide the mixture between two mugs. 

This obviously isn’t going to be the best chocolate cake in the world but it isn’t half bad for something that comes out of the microwave.  You could also make it in a bowl and spoon it out to have with ice cream.

Ingredients

4 tbsp self-raising flour

4 tbsp sugar

3 tbsp cocoa powder

1 egg

3 tbsp vegetable oil

3 tbsp chocolate hazelnut spread (basically Nutella)

3 tbsp milk

Optional – squirty cream 

1.    Put all the ingredient in a mug and whisk together with a fork. Be sure the get everything mixed well.

2.    If making one mug put into the microwave on a plate and nuke for 2-3 minutes on your highest setting.

3.    If making two then pour half the mixture into another mug and nuke each one individually for 1 ½ - 2 minutes.

4.    Top with cream if you want.

Bread Pudding

I go through phases of thinking I don’t have a certain spice and buying it when I do my shopping four weeks in a row. This means I then have a glut of a particular spice and think of ways to use it. Smoked paprika is currently in abundance and once I managed to use cumin seeds (mainly toasted and then ground down) in every meal for two weeks. I don’t seem to do this for dried herbs as I’m always scrabbling about and using thyme instead of oregano or something else.  

As it’s coming up to Christmas I decided to check what spices I had to aid me in Christmas style baking. Along with the usual – cinnamon, ginger – I discovered that I had two unopened refill packets of mixed spice and a small glass jar of it. I have no idea when I bought these but mixed spice just smells instantly of Christmas to me so I looked into how I could use it. A recipe that calls for tablespoons of spice and not ½ teaspoons. I wasn’t doing well until I remembered I was seeing a friend soon and that she likes bread pudding. I’ve never made it before but looking at recipes I soon discovered a lot of mixed spice was needed. I did a mini trial run last weekend and then went for it last night. 

This tastes good to me but I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten it before! However the test batch went down well at work (although what doesn’t?!) and I’m sure this is what other pictures of it looks like. It’s a good way to use up excess bread you may have and can make use of any dried fruit you have lying around. It’s basically making a bit of a custard style gloop using squished up bread. And if that doesn’t tempt you …. 

Ingredients

500g bread (I used white but I’ve been assured wholemeal will do)

500g dried fruit (sultanas and raisins went in mine but I guess anything dried would do – maybe not apple and pineapple but cranberries, apricots)

75g mixed peel (I know people can be funny about this but you need it)

2 tbsp mixed spice

Good grating of nutmeg (and I mean a good one)

600ml milk

3 large eggs, beaten

150g brown sugar (light or dark or a mixture)

Zest of a lemon (optional)

120g melted butter 

1.    Bread the bread up into pieces and put into a bowl. Add the fruit, peel and spices. Then pour in the milk and get your hand in there. Squish up the bread so it absorbs the milk and makes a batter that takes in the fruit. This doesn’t look attractive but is good fun.

2.    Add the eggs, sugar and zest, stir and leave for 15 minutes.

3.    Preheat the oven the GM4/180°C and line a large tray. Mine was about 35cm x 20cm. You could use something smaller, the final result will just be deeper.

4.    Add the melted butter to the mixture and stir well. Pour into the tin (you can sprinkle with sugar to form a crust if you like) and bake for 1 ½ hours. Check it’s done but it’s meant to be stodgy so don’t worry too much about it.

5.    You can either serve warm with custard or cream, or wait until its cold and cut into chunks.

N.B. Now having 500g of stale/left over bread is quite a lot. This recipe will happily be adapted for the weight of bread you have. I did a trial run with 160g of bread and just did about a third of everything. It worked. Bake for about 40 minutes and check.

Cheese Biscuits

The most amazing chocolate shop has opened near where I work. It used to be a Peyton and Byrne so I was devastated when it changed to a rather weak cafe. I could no longer just grab some fabulous cupcakes as gifts for people. However the rather weak cafe has closed and in its place, intoxicating the air with the aroma of a saucepan full of molten chocolate, is paul.a.young.  

The smell dragged me in and I looked in awe at brownies, slabs of chocolates, delicate confectionary and the owner making chocolate tarts right in front of me. I was slightly interrupted from my blissful musings by a rather loud American going on about how wondrous the chocolate was but forgave her when I realised she had suffered a lifetime of Hershey's. Luckily a perfect excuse to purchase brownies was presented to me by the need to provide cake for a meeting. I saw four different types of brownies so said I'd have one of each. I'd seen that one was salted caramel so that was enough for me. 

When I got to the meeting much excitement ensued and the brownies were cut up to be shared. Then, shock, horror and more excitement - one of the brownies was Marmite flavoured. I hate marmite but it went down well with others which I suppose is the point of Marmite. The leftover pieces were taken into another meeting as a form of Russian roulette so it gave much joy. Now Marmite brownies are a fairly normal thing to dislike. Dislike of bread with cheese in, from a person who likes cheese, is just weird in my eyes. The Thew met today's baking with passionate distaste. Apparently cheese goes on bread - pizza is included in this - but not incorporated as an ingredient into it. Therefore cheese biscuits are wrong according to The Thew. I like it so I baked these, plus I had cheese to use up. These make a great Christmas gift accompanied by cheese and can be made thinner and larger if needed (just cook for less time). I was making them to have on their own so make chunky ones. 

Ingredients

175g strong cheese (I had 100g of blue cheese in the fridge so added 75g of parmesan. Aggressive cheddar would work on its own or mixed with others)

100g unsalted butter, softened (cheese can be salty so you can use salted butter but it could make it too salty)

1 egg yolk

175g plain flour (I used 125g white and then 50g of rye as I like the colour it gives)
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1 egg, beaten (optional) 

1.    Grate the cheese if you can or crumble up. Basically you want small pieces.

2.    Mix the butter, cheese and egg yolk together in a big mush.

3.    Add the flour and pepper and combine to create a dampish dough.  Make into a disk, wrap in cling film and leave in the fridge for 30 minutes.

4.    Preheat the oven to 200°C/GM6 and remove the dough from the fridge. If it’s been in for a while then just let it soften a bit as this will make it easier to roll.

5.    Roll out the dough on a floured surface to about 5mm thick and cut out shapes. I used a round 5cm cutter but you can do shapes if you want. Keep re-rolling until all the dough is used up.

6.    Place on a baking tray (they don’t need to be left far apart as they go upwards not across so you can get quite a few on at a time) and glaze with the beaten egg. If you want them matt, not shiny, then leave it off.

7.    Bake for 12-15 minutes (I turn mine half way through to keep the colour even) and then take out and cool. 

Makes about 25-35 depending on cutter size.

Vol-au-vents with Devilled Egg filling

Work has been busy. I shan't bore you with it but I'm very pleased my friend Lorna recommended a kick ass concealer for under the eyes as it's made me look alive for the past few weeks (Nars Radiant Creamy Concealer put on with an Ecotools Airbrush Effect brush for those interested). I also invested in a good serum for night time which is my new thing. Much better than moisturiser and you only need a little of it so a bottle goes a long way.  

Anyway, my brain hasn't really been processing anything outside of work so I required help with what I should make. As my work colleagues eat most of what I make I thought that I should ask them for ideas and boy did they have some. The one that caught my eye was the request for vol-au-vents as they are so out of fashion and I remember them as being THE party food. What happened to them?! Where did they go?! I mean puff pastry cases filled with amazing things that we all secretly love – prawn cocktail, egg mayo, chicken mix. 

So really the main decision when making vol-au-vents are what the hell to put in them. Mine were filled with devilled egg mixture for two reasons: 1. I had a lot of eggs in the house as The Thew had randomly bought about a million and 2. We'd had had them recently at our neighbours and they were delicious. Therefore they fit the ingredients I had at home and the necessity for something a bit out of fashion to go into those pastry cases. I’m going to be honest and say that the actual vol-au-vents were a pain, and you may as well buy the frozen ready to bake, but it was good fun filling them and they tasted great. 

Ingredients 

Vol-au-vents

1 x pack of ready to roll puff pastry (do not be tempted to by ready rolled, its not thick enough)

1 x egg, beaten 

1.    Preheat the oven to 200°C/GM 6.

2.    Roll the pastry out to about 5mm thick.

3.    Cut out circles – I did mine with a 5cm cutter. Then using a smaller circular cutter (this was a bugger to find and I ended up using the large end of a piping nozzle) cut in the middle of the circle to about half the depth of the pastry. You’re ensuring that you can easily scoop out the middle.

4.    Put on a baking tray and brush the tops (not the sides) with egg. Then bake for 10 minutes.

5.    Take out and allow to cool before taking out the middle. You’ll probably need to cut around the mark you’ve made with the smaller cutter before putting all the excess pastry out (this is a bit of a pain).

6.    Then pop back in the oven for another 5-6 minutes to firm up and dry out. Take out and cool until you want to fill.

 

Filling

5 x eggs

Mayonnaise

Cayenne pepper

Mustard powder

Balsamic vinegar

Smoked paprika

 

1.    Hard boil the eggs. It takes about 18 minutes from having cold water covering them.

2.    Cool and then peel. Cut in half and scoop out the yolks. Finely chop the egg whites and leave to one side.

3.    Mush the yolks up in a bowl. Now I haven’t out quantities as it’s more about personal taste, how big the yolks are etc etc. Add about 50ml of mayo, a sprinkling of cayenne pepper, 1 tsp of mustard powder and a scant tablespoon of vinegar (you can use white wine vinegar). Mix together and taste. Maybe a bit of salt, maybe more cayenne pepper – taste and see.

4.    Once you’re happy with the yolk mix add the chopped up whites. Then fill the cases with the mixture.

5.    I finished mine with a sprinkling of smoked paprika as it adds a little something. I recommend it.

Meringues

A quarter of the year has gone. Where I don't know but it has. It never helps that at work I'm always planning months in advance with clients or working on projects with a live date about two months in the future. To be honest I'm just surprised it isn't Christmas already and thankful that there is still some of the year left. The clocks going forward and ‘summertime’ starting always seems like a kick up the arse with the year telling you to get on with everything as you can’t pretend its January anymore.

So I’ve decided to bake something I have never done before, using techniques I don’t particularly like but as baker should be able to do. I had some egg whites left in the fridge after the bread and butter pudding (as many yolks were needed) so meringues it is. I intend to make them everytime I have left over egg whites but never quite get around to it. I always think that they look great when I see them in shops and I thought – yep, I want to look that impressive. They are a show piece, especially if you make them a bit big. Ideally you use a piping bag to make them, which along with delicate icing, is not something I like to use. I get really messy as whatever I'm piping squirts everywhere. You can use a spoon but I thought I should get my piping skills up. It did mean hunting around for the stupid nozzles for my piping bag as I had no idea where I put them, however this little exercise unearthed some things I’d forgotten about so it was probably worth it.

Ingredients 

4 egg whites

Pinch of salt

115g caster sugar (I only had golden so that us why they aren't crisp white in colour)
115g icing sugar

1 heaped tsp cornflour

Food colouring (optional) 

1.    Preheat the oven to 140°C/GM 1.

2.    Lightly grease with oil a baking tray - I used rapeseed but just make sure it doesn't have an flavour.

3.    Put the egg whites and salt in a ridiculously clean bowl. I'm sure all your bowls are clean but one whiff of oil and you won't get the egg whites to fluff up. They are stupidly stubborn about that kind of thing. Anyway whisk the hell out of them until they form soft peaks.

4.    Then whisk in the sugar a tbsp at a time until you have a bowl of shiny egg whites that keep stiff peaks in them.

5.    Sift the cornflour and about a third of the icing sugar over the top. Then fold in with a metal spoon. Sift the rest of the icing sugar on top and then fold in.

6.    Now just take a heaped tablespoon of the egg white and put it on the baking tray. You'll probably need two, or do in two lots, as this makes about 15.

7.    Optional bit - put a drop of food colouring liquid or gel on the top and use a skewer, sharp end of a knife, toothpick to swirl it around.

8.    Put in the oven for about 50 minutes. I have a gas oven so I turn the tray midway through as the back ones will get done quicker. Once done switch off the oven, keep the door on the latch and let the meringues cool as the oven cools - about 30 minutes. Then you're done!

You can obviously serve these with cream or just on their own. The idea is that the outside is crunchy and the middle is sticky. After making these I did realise that I find the texture of the outside a bit weird on my teeth, like biting into cotton wool but that’s just me. I’m actually grimacing while writing this as it freaks me out but I eat them anyway as I like the middle bit!