Happy birthday to me!

I'm not sure how I came to make my own birthday cake this year--usually it magically appears at a lunch or a dinner. It's never anything ornate -- when certain people listen to me, it's a simple chocolate or vanilla cake (sometimes marble), when certain people don't listen to me it turns into a black forest cherry layer cake (which, btw, I absolutely detest). It always arrives with a certain number of candles, and an interesting rendition of happy birthday...off-pitch, off-tempo...but who really notices, right?

For those of you who've been reading me for a while, you know how much I adore chocolate. It really is the perfect celebratory food, and (at least to me) synonymous with joy. You also know how much I like cooking from Nigella's books. For the past few years, my office treats have been based from one of her many, many fabulous recipes. Last year I made her Chocolate Guinness Cake, a few years back I made her dense chocolate loaf. There were others, but I can't remember them all...This year, the treats I made for the office was her Honey Chocolate Cake, but as cuppycakes (or as I renamed them, Nigella's Chocolate Hunnycakes).

So a few weeks ago, when I was deciding what should be made for my home celebration was a little difficult. I mean, I knew it would be a chocolate cake of some sort, but which one? There were so many in Nigella's books that I'd love to try, but another book called out to me.

Actually...I used my birthday as the excuse to buy another cookbook: Green & Black's Chocolate Recipes. It beckoned me for weeks...it truly was love at first site.

Maybe it was the decadence of the gold dust on the accompanying photograph that caught my eye (hey, I make no apologies for adoring gold and chocolate), but it was fairly easy for me to settle on their Dark Chocolate Mousse Cake. Even though the strains of Goldfinger rang in my mind, I decided against buying some gold dust, instead opting a much simpler presentation of a dusting of whiter than white icing sugar on the almost abyss-like blackness of the cake, along with a dollop of coffee-flavoured double cream.

The cake is very easy to make and I had no problems with any of it. I took the author's advice and made it a day in advance and put it in the fridge after it had cooled to get a wickedly dense and fudgey texture. It is a flourless cake, so it's perfect for any chocoholic who happens to be on a gluten-free diet.

And the taste? Simply magnificent. I used a combination of 86% and 70% cocoa-solids chocolate, which imparted a very Barry White-like quality to the cake...girls, you know what I mean.

Green & Black's Dark Chocolate Mousse Cake (p153)

Serves 10

Ingredients
1 tbsp ground almonds plus extra for dusting the cake tin
a little melted butter to help the ground almonds coat the tin
300g dark chocolate (minimum 60% cocoa solids)
275g caster sugar (fruit sugar)
165g unsalted butter
pinch of vanilla salt
5 extra-large eggs
icing sugar for dusting

• Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. Prepare a 20 or 23 cm/8" or 9" springform baking tin, or any other tin with removable sides by brushing it with the melted butter and dusting it with some of the ground almond. Shake off any excess and set aside.
• Melt the chocolate, sugar, butter and salt on top of a double boiler and remove from heat.
• Whisk together the eggs with the one tablespoon of ground almonds and fold into the melted chocolate. After a few minutes, it will thickend. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 35-40 minutes.
• Let cool on a rack before popping it into the fridge.
• To serve, dust with the icing sugar.

Notes:

• This cake will not rise much, but will poof and then fall, creating a slight crater-like effect.
• You can try mixing in some good quality flavoured dark chocolate as part of the 300g. G&B's recommends orange-flavoured, but I suppose raspberry would work nicely as well.
• This is a very rich cake, so be forewarned.
  

edit: Just a quick note for those who are getting confuzzed...I'm doing a catch up on this month's wining and dining. Far too many meals and not enough posting time!

cheers!
jasmine

tags: Baking Chocolate Gluten-free


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Feast: September Celebrations Part Four

Apart from the blog birthday and my birthday, my boyfriend (affectionately known as The Fussy Eater (TFE)) and I celebrated our second year together. As with last year, we decided to celebrate in Stratford: tickets to Twelfth Night and dinner at The Old Prune.

Whereas the play was very uneven and somewhat disappointing (please rein in Brian Bedford...the play is NOT about the butler), dinner was fabulous. I highly recommend The Old Prune--beautifully fresh, local ingredients prepared in such delicious ways. The restaurant is heavily involved with Stratford Chefs School, well-known for the quality of their graduates. Service is exquisite--nicely timed and the waiter was friendly and knowledgable.

Here's what we had--TFE's on the left and mine is on the right...


The amuse bouche to share: Herbed goat cheese with pickled veg.


left: Warm salad of duck confit and wild arugula with rosemary, parsley and chilli oil.
right: Mesquite-smoked "kanpachi" with spicy marinated cabbage, green apple and maple syrup.


left: Twice-cooked Guelph's Rowe Farm pork rib on rapini and white beans with basil and garlic.
right: Fragrant and spicy lamb tagine with root veg.


left: Sweet ravioli with cherries in rum.
right: Slow-baked chocolate mousse with hazelnut praline tuile and espresso foam.


after dinner sweets to share: homemade truffles, jellybabies, buter cookies, biscuits and blueberry-lemon mini-mini cakes.

Before the show we visited a costume gallery with costumes from previous productions. Although there were pieces from various shows, I thought this costume, from last year's production of Into The Woods, was something you might be interested in...it's very reminiscent of Giuseppe Arcimboldo's paintings, especially Vertumnus.



cheers!
jasmine

tags: The Old Prune Stratford Chefs School Stratford Festival

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Feast: September Celebrations Part Three

I looked at the calendar today -- my birthday was how many days away? With everything going on, I never did finish all my feasting posts.

I was going to split my birthday feeding frenzy into two posts, but given there are only a few days left to the month, I thought I'd post the actual birthday festivities in one post.


My very sweet and wonderful friend and I usually take one another out for lunch on our birthdays. We went to a fabulous restaurant, prior to pampering ourselves at the spa.

From Left to Right:
top row: cheese fritters (Brie, Cambozola and Chevre with marinated veg and a sweet red pepper dip); the soup du jour (sorry, can't remember); beef wraps with slaw.
middle row: seared tuna in nori and tempura; tempura veg; frozen mousse.
bottom row: Chocolate attitude (how aptly named!)--choccie pate, sorbet & brownie.






Then, of course, an afternoon of massage, manicures and pedicures. For those of you who are interested, my toenail colour is "Drama Queen" (yes, a number of people have commented on the appropriateness of that name--and colour).





Afterwards, my darling TFE took me to a really nice restaurant that prides itself on its seasonal menu. I apologize in advance for the quality of the photos. It was getting dark and I hate using the flash in a restaurant.

From Left to Right:
top row: my G&T, sweet potato bread, brie and mushrooms in phyllo with cranberry chutney.
middle row: apple & rosehip sorbet, steak and mushrooms, beef tenderloin with sweet potato brulee.
bottom row: molten chocolate babycakes with white chocolate ice cream.





cheers!
jasmine

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