For the birthday boy II

  

And if you're wondering what The (spoiled) Photographer's real birthday cake looked like.....Anita made him an absolutely wonderful photography inspired cake and cupcakes. And if you think that it looks good, wait till you taste them! Amazing!(the cake is made up of about 6 layers of cake sandwiched together with chocolate ganache).For more info visit http://www.kokengeniet.co.za/.

 

[Disclaimer: I like Anita. She is a very good friend. She bakes me birthday cupcakes. She bakes my husband birthday cupcakes. But I only recommend her cakes because they are truly amazing.]

For the birthday boy (chocolate and raspberry cake)

Last weekend it was The Photographer’s birthday. One of his favourite things is to lie in bed on his birthday morning and eat birthday cake.

So, even though the amazing cake artist, Anita, from Kok ‘n Geniet (www.kokengeniet.co.za) was making The Photographer a cake for a little gathering in the evening, I decided that I should bake something small to tide him over.

Unfortunately it was a surprise (and I have some difficulty with all the settings on the camera) so there are no process photos. But the end product was so pretty, I had to share.

Probably serves four but tastes better for only two

Ingredients

Cake

(Easy-mix Chocolate Cake from Bill Granger’s Simply Bill – I quartered the recipe)

70g cake flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

15g cocoa powder

55g caster sugar

60g very soft butter

1 egg

45mL milk

A pinch of salt

Extras

100g milk or dark chocolate

100ml cream

About 300ml ready made chocolate mousse (or you can make your own if you are not laai-zy like me)

About 4-5 tablespoons raspberry jam

3 tablespoons frozen raspberries (optional)

1 punnet fresh raspberries

(you also need a wooden skewer, baking paper, cartridge paper)

 

Preheat the oven to 180ºC.

Grease 3 ramekins with a little soft butter. Cut out small circles of baking paper (the same circumference as the inside if the ramekin) and place into the base.

Sift the flour, baking powder, cocoa and sugar together into a bowl. Add butter, egg and milk and mix with an electric mixer for 1-2 min on low until smooth.

Spoon the mixture into the ramekins. They should be about 1/3 – ½ full. You may need to grease and line an extra one if they are too small.

Bake for 15-20min until a wooden skewer poked in the centre of the cakes comes out clean.

Leave in the ramekins for 5 min and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

If the cakes are quite pointy (as mine were) then use a knife to cut off some of the top so the cakes can balance on each other. Then cut the cakes horizontally so each cake yields two round disks

Place the frozen raspberries in a pan and heat on medium heat until melted (you can do this in the microwave too). Add raspberry jam a teaspoon at a time until the berry mixture just looses its tartness.

Place the first disk of cake onto a plate (preferably the one you plan to serve it on). Spoon 1-2 teaspoons of raspberry mixture onto the cake. Spoon 1-2 tablespoons of chocolate mousse onto the cake and spread gently over the surface. Add the next disk of cake and repeat the raspberry and chocolate mousse mixture until you have placed the last disk on the cake. Cut (or break) the wooden skewer to the height of the cake and insert it vertically into the centre of the cake.

To make the collar: take a piece of cartridge paper. Cut it to the following size: the width should be long enough that you should be able to wrap it around the cake with about 1cm overlap. The height should be about 4cm above the top of the cake. Cut a piece of baking paper the same size and staple them together at the top edges.

Place the chocolate in a heatproof bowl and microwave 1 minute at a time on medium power until the chocolate is melted.

Spread the chocolate onto the baking paper side of the paper collar in a rectangular shape leaving a 1cm border around the edges. Place in the freezer until the chocolate is set slightly. Remove from the freezer.

Wrap the chocolate collar around the cake (chocolate side should be against the cake). At the seam, pull away a centimetre of the baking paper at the start of the collar and lay the other edge on top. Staple the top(above the chocolate line). Cover if possible and put in the fridge for an hour (or overnight if you want to serve the cake for breakfast ….)

When you are ready to serve, place the cream into a bowl. Whip with an electric beater until stiff peaks form. Add raspberry jam a teaspoon at a time until the cream has a slight raspberry flavour but isn’t overly sweet.

Remove the cake from the fridge. Carefully peel off the baking paper from the chocolate. Try not to touch the chocolate as your hands will leave marks.

Spoon the cream onto the top of the cake until it is ½ cm away from the top of the collar. Arrange the raspberries on the top and around the sides.

Bring to your husband in bed on his birthday…..he will never leave you (or so I hope).

Home is where the (Minestrone Soup) is

I crave this soup every time I am away from home for a while.

Because it is healthy. And it is filling. Not in the way fish and chips is filling and makes you want roll around on the floor and groan about how full you are. In the good way of “I don’t need to eat for the next 5 hours because I am truly satisfied” way.

I usually make this soup with sausages that we get at the local supermarket. They are german style smoked sausages called Mettenden. This time I used bacon. If you are vegetarian, super-low fat or freaked out by eating pigs you can leave it out. I like to add a bit of meat so the Photographer still thinks he is eating some from time to time.

Makes about 8 meal sized portions.

Ingredients

2 onions

3 carrots

250g bacon or smoked sausages e.g. mettenden/ chorizo

1 pepper/capsicum

4 zucchini

8 baby potatoes

1 can butter beans

1 tin tomato paste

1 large jar of Passata (600mL) or 2 tins of chopped tomatoes

½ cup pearl barley

8-10 teaspoons of chicken or vegetable stock powder

Salt and pepper

Olive oil

Chop the bacon, onion, carrots, pepper and zucchini. Quarter the potatoes. Drain and rinse the beans in a colander.

 Heat the soup pot over medium heat. When the pan is hot add the bacon and fry until cooked. Remove the bacon and set aside.

Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil to the pan and add the onions. Fry until transparent.

 

 Add the carrots and potatoes and cook for a further 5 minutes. Add the tomato paste and the pearl barley. 

 Add the passata. Boil 3.5L of water in the kettle and add to pot.

 Place the lid on the pot and bring to boil.

Once the soup is boiling, turn down the heat and let simmer for 30min (the pearl barley should be almost tender and the soup should have changed from a bright red into a deeper red).

Add the pepper, zucchini, beans and bacon. Add 6 tsp of stock and stir until dissolved. Taste and continue to add additional stock powder to taste.

Add salt and pepper. Cook for a further 10min or until the zucchini are tender.

(I like to serve mine with grated cheese on the top – parmesan if you have it otherwise any grateable cheese will do!)

Teleporting (Carrot Cake)

I must have loved food from an early age because I remember chatting to my best friend at the age of 8 about what we were eating (often we would make it up) and then pretend to send the imaginary food down the phone line. The person on the other side's job was to suck in really hard and imagine that you could taste whatever was sent down the line: usually a big moist piece of chocolate cake with icing.
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This carrot cake recipe has made the modern equivalent of such a journey: the Photographer and I were living in Germany for 6 months at the end of 2009. During this time, a friend in South Africa emailed me and asked whether I had a good carrot cake recipe. I didn't, but I remembered a cookbook at my mom's place which I had used to make carrot cake several times while growing up.So I popped off a quick email to Australia. Within a few hours, the recipe arrived via Germany in South Africa.

(I have a suspicion that once I post this recipe on the blog, the recipe will "travel" to all sorts of other destinations as well).

This recipe comes from "My Way With Food" by Pamela Shippel.This is one of the cookbooks which I learned to bake from.

You will not regret making this cake (unless you really dislike carrot cake, and even then, you will probably like it).

Note: This recipe makes a lot of cake so I usually use half the recipe.

Cake

 4 extra large eggs

310 ml (1 ¼ cup) castor sugar

310 ml (1 ¼ cup) oil

5ml vanilla essence

625 ml flour

10 bicarbonate of soda

5 ml baking powder

10ml cinnamon

625 ml grated carrot (tightly packed)

100g pecans nuts, chopped

Zest of half a lemon

Preheat the oven to 160º C

Beat the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add the oil to the egg mixture.

Sift the dry ingredients

Add the dry ingredients, nuts, and grated carrots to the egg mixture in 3 batches and fold in gently.

Pour the dough into a large square dish or two 20 to 25cm round tins lined with baking paper.

Smooth the top and bake for 45 minutes in the square dish or 23-35 minutes in the two round tins.
The cake is ready when a skewer poked into the center of the cake comes out clean.

Ice when cold

Icing

90g butter

500ml icing sugar

3 ml vanilla essence

125g smooth cottage cheese ( approximately)

Use a food processor* to cut the butter into the icing sugar until it looks like course bread crumbs. 

Add the vanilla and cream cheese and use the food processor to mix it in. Do not overmix.

  

Spread over cake when cold.

Garnish with lemon zest.

*If you do not have a food processor, cut the butter into small pieces and use your fingers (not your palms) to rub the butter into the icing sugar. Then mix about 1/3 of the cream cheese in with a wooden spoon. Then add the remaining cream cheese until just mixed through.