Chocolate, marmalade and hazelnut cake

For fans of jaffa cakes or those needing a gluten-free cake... This is another recipe from 'Bake' (Rachel Allen). I myself don't need to avoid gluten, but I love cakes that have ground nuts instead of flour. The texture and flavour is always amazing. Because this cake has no flour, and no raising agent apart from beaten egg whites, it rises while baking, then sinks on cooling. This is quite normal for a flourless cake, so don't be concerned by its deflated appearance.

The recipe

Preheat oven to 190ºC. Grease and line a 22cm loose-bottomed pan (I used a springform tin and lined the sides as well).
Melt together 175g dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa) and 175g of butter - I do this in the microwave.
Grind 150g of hazelnuts, with skins on, in a food processor. Separate 5 eggs. Using an electric mixer, beat the egg yolks with 175g of caster sugar until mousse-like in texture. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Add 200g finely-cut marmalade, grated zest of one orange and the ground nuts to the chocolate mixture and stir to combine. Add the beaten egg whites, one third at a time, folding gently through.
Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 170ºC. Bake for a further 35-40 mins or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted in the centre of the cake (the skewer test wasn't helpful for me - see further down). Cool for 20 mins before removing the cake from the tin and leaving to cool completely on a rack.

When completely cool, make the topping. Melt together 75g of dark chocolate (70% cocoa), 75ml cream and grated zest of one orange. Spread over the cake with a spatula and leave to set for 30 mins - 1hr (note from my photo that I didn't let it set - too eager to tuck in!).

Serves 12

I loved the 5 egg yolks making a flower in the bottom of my KitchenAid mixer bowl :)

I used the KitchenAid for the yolks and sugar, so I decided to crack out the Dualit to beat the egg whites. This is her maiden voyage. Looooove my Dualit! She doesn't just look purty, she does a fantastic job too. And as much as I love my KitchenAid mixer, sometimes I can end up feeling a bit detached from the process. I turn the mixer on and let her do her stuff. The Dualit lets me be a bit more involved in the process.

I am always fascinated by the transformation that takes place when you beat egg whites. Going from this...

to this...

Before, during, after...


Adding the ground nuts, marmalade and zest to the melted chocolate and butter.


ready to bake

On the left, the cake after baking; on the right, the cake after cooling - you can see it sank a bit in the middle, which is normal for flourless cakes. Although the recipe states to cook until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the middle of the cake, I baked the cake for about 15 mins longer, at which point it felt firm in the centre, but there were still moist crumbs on the skewer. I pulled it out to cool at this point as it was firm enough and was starting to get quite dark around the outside.

You can see here how incredibly moist this cake is (and why the skewer test wasn't a helpful guide). It is very very rich - I couldn't manage a second helping, which is unusual!

Bakewell bars

I have a confession: I absolutely adore the bright red jam you get in baked goods such as jam donuts. I have always wanted to be able to buy it to use in cooking, or indeed just to slather on toast. Nothing similar seems to be readily available in supermarkets, but I recently discovered it is possible to buy it online at Simply No Knead, so I purchased several small containers which arrived earlier this week. This mysterious jam turns out to be apple and raspberry jam, with more apple than raspberry.

Today I decided to put the jam to use by making bakewell bars. Bakewell tart has a layer of jam over the base of the pastry case, topped with a layer of frangipane (almond sponge); these bars are the same but are cooked as a slice instead. The recipe is from Rachel Allen's book 'Bake'. It is slightly different from other recipes I have seen as the frangipane layer contains an equal quantity of semolina as it does almond meal. It also has almond essence so you still get a nice almondy flavour. Having Dutch heritage and consequently an adoration of marzipan, nothing can ever be too almondy for my taste, so the addition of almond essence is a welcome one to make up for having less ground almonds. The semolina obviously changes the texture of the top layer - it is more crumbly and less fine, a more cake-like texture, I suppose. I will have to try it with all almond meal next time to better compare.


The pastry layer covered with jam. The instructions were to roll the pastry out, but I just pressed the dough straight into the tin to cover the base with my fingers and smoothed it out a bit with the back of a spoon.


The almond sponge layer

Peanut butter and white chocolate blondies

This is the first recipe I have made from Rachel Allen's 'Bake'. For fans of peanut butter obviously, which I most certainly am.

This recipe is fantastic - quick and easy to make, and utterly rewarding to eat :p. I made a slightly healthier version, though still naughty. I used Devondale Light butter (just because I hadn't softened any proper butter) and light peanut butter as that was what I had to hand. I did wonder if these alterations would change the brownies much in terms of texture. Normal peanut butter is softer than the reduced fat version, so I thought it mightn't beat as well with the butter, but then the light butter is much softer than normal butter, so it seemed to work out fine. The resulting brownies were moist and moreish, so it didn't seem to matter too much that I reduced the overall fat content slightly.

The recipe...

• 125g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 100g butter
• 150g crunchy peanut butter
• 175g soft light brown sugar
  
• 1 egg, beaten
  
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 75g white chocolate, chopped

Butter and line a 20 x 20cm square cake tin.
Preheat the oven to 170º C.
Sift the flour and baking powder and set aside.
Cream together the butter and peanut butter until very soft. Add the brown sugar, egg and vanilla. Beat until combined. Add the flour / baking powder and chocolate and mix to form a dough.
Spread the dough into the prepared pan.
Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown and almost firm in the centre.
Allow to cool in the tin, then remove and cut into squares.


Years ago from my Family Circle slices cookbook I learnt the trick of extending the baking paper up two opposite sides of the tin to make it easier to remove the slice. I didn't leave much paper extended here, but it was still enough to make it very easy to remove the cooked blondie.


Even though it says to cool in the tin, I didn't wait until it was completely cooled before removing it using my baking paper handles to cool on the rack. I was feeling impatient to get stuck in as it smelt so good!


Sliced while still just slightly warm - yuuuum!

While I was baking the blondies a courier arrived with another parcel for me - gorgeous snowflake cookie cutters, and 2 stunning Nordic Ware bundt tins - the original bundt tin and the star tin. This joins my Nordic Ware cathedral bundt pan and pancake pan. I have my eye on several others, but how many bundt tins can a girl justify having?!