Tag Archives: chocolate

Chocolate cake: pretty and understated

Posted on by under Cakes, Sweet

Do you have a favourite chocolate cake? One that you are secretly proud of? Your go-to recipe, much-requested at events, loved by all? I don’t. I have not yet baked a chocolate cake that is undeniably good. Well, at least not the kind of good that you remember and store away in the domestic part of your mind for times of birthdays, bake sales, morning teas and breakups. I am yet to find a signature chocolate cake.

I have heard stories of my Nana Jean’s chocolate cake. An impossibly high, intensely chocolatey kind of chocolate cake that was the envy of all her friends. So you can imagine my excitement to find a recipe in her beautiful, lilting copperplate handwriting in her cook book.

Oh, and just below, a chocolate icing recipe!

With a certain degree of stubbornness I set to resurrecting the chocolate cake. I will make this chocolate cake, I said to myself, and it will be amazing. It will be grand and fragrant and look generous and indulgent.

No, Meg. No.

Perhaps it was the wrong mindset that sabotaged my lofty ambitions. Certainly, no recipe from Nana’s cook book has been straightforward. Missing cooking times, imprecise oven temperatures, ambiguous instructions are commonplace. Indeed, you will notice that the baking time is missing from the handwritten recipe. From past experience I should have expected a hiccup.

It isn’t a bad hiccup. The cake looks nice, and tastes nice. It simply is not the noble cake I had imagined. My father concurs. This is not his mother’s famed chocolate cake.

But it is a pretty cake. Demure and understated, this cake is lightly chocolatey and not too sticky on the palate. Part of me wants to say delicate, but that isn’t quite right. It isn’t sponge-cake-delicate at all. It is just a low-rising, restrained chocolate cake. The kind that is perfect with a cup of tea or a glass of milk. Or eaten for breakfast in a bowl with milk poured over. Or is that just my childhood memories masking what is an appropriate use of cake?

This kind of cake is perfect for some people. My boyfriend tells me that his own grandmother makes a nearly-identical cake. This perhaps proves how strong a role food memories play in the development of our palates, because he absolutely loved this cake! On the other side of the state he was singing the recipe’s praises to his own family.

It is so lovely that in setting out to recreate Nana Jean’s menu I have been able to connect other people with their own culinary heritage. In many ways, this cake has reaffirmed my quest to rediscover such neglected recipes.

Oh, and this cake is a great starting point for me. I’m on a mission, friends. A mission to find my signature chocolate cake. (The best kind of mission, no?).

I look forward to sharing my findings, and resurrected recipes, with you.

Happy baking,

Meg.

~ ~ ~

Pretty and understated chocolate cake

3 eggs

¼ lb sugar

¼ lb plain flour

1 dessertspoon cocoa

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp cream of tartar

1 tbsp melted butter

½ tsp vanilla

1 dessertspoon hot water

Grease and line a cake tin. Preheat oven to 175 degrees C.

Beat eggs and sugar well. Stir in flour sifted with cocoa, baking powder and cream of tartar. Lastly stir in butter, hot water and vanilla.

Transfer immediately to cake tin and bake for about 30 minutes, until your whole kitchen smells chocolately and the cake springs back to touch.

Let cool in tin for 5 minutes, then turn out on to cooling rack. Cool completely before icing.

 

Chocolate icing

½ cup icing sugar

½ tsp cocoa

1 big teaspoon butter

1 dessertspoon boiling water

Sift icing sugar and cocoa evenly. Mix in butter and boiling water until smooth. You may need to add more water to gain a smooth spreading consistency.

Slather over cooled chocolate cake in smooth circles with the back of a spoon.

The best brownies for a diet, or to serve your enemies

Posted on by under Slices, Sweet

Nana Jean was a wily soul. When cornered by an acquaintance imploring her for a recipe she would deflect, muttering ‘oh I have it written down somewhere’, only to conveniently forget its whereabouts. By my father’s accounts, Nana was proficient at culinary misdirection.

Seemingly, Jean’s covert cooking operations extended to her cookbook. Unfortunately for me, there are dozens of recipes without specified oven temperatures and no mention of what dish in which to cook the cake or pudding. And this brings me to these brownies.

When you think of brownies, what comes to mind? Nuts and fruit? Slice-shaped baked cake-like wedges? Chocolate?

Yes, well, there was no mention of chocolate in this recipe.

No melted chocolate. No cocoa. Nothing.

And no nuts.

The horror.

I did some cursory review of brownie recipes online. I headed to Epicurious, which espoused the virtues of cocoa as opposed to melted chocolate (it’s an interesting concept – read about it here). I had in my possession a packet of cacao, and so tried to substitute this for cocoa. I also guessed the quantity of chocolate powder, hoping (or perhaps even naively believing) that I had inherited some kind of sixth-sense for baking. I haven’t.

Cacao – not so innocent

And so we come to the title of this article. These brownies truly resemble brownies. They are gorgeously studded with sultanas and walnuts – they haven’t sunk to the bottom of the dish; by some kind of culinary magic they are perfectly suspended through the slice. They smell amazing when pulled from the oven. They are very convincing imitations of brownies. But they taste truly awful. The cake is bitter and as for the texture… well it’s a bit stodgy. Sort of claggy. Perfect for those on a diet – you’ll get all of that giddy excitement of indulging in something as truly sinful, truly comforting as a brownie, and once you’ve taken a bite you have absolutely no desire for more. Your craving has evaporated. And your enemies, if they have the displeasure of tasting these brownies, will be suitably revolted.

However, I am not going to grace you with my recipe. Just in case some unwitting soul skips right to the recipe and wastes a great deal of time, hope and promises on delivering a plate heavy with brownies. You’re welcome.

And as a postscript, it was suggested to me by a friend that Jean may have simply written down the parts of the recipe she thought she may forget. That in all her cookery experience she had no need of cocoa quantities, no need to state the obvious with the nuts, no need to discuss oven temperatures and baking dishes. I like this interpretation. It’s nicer than thinking of Jean purposefully omitting things from her cookbook during her youth, to the chagrin of her grandchildren some 80 years down the track.

Yes, so, I am currently on the search of the perfect brownie recipe. I sorely need to redeem myself in the eyes of my disappointed younger brothers. Do you have a tried and tested go-to never-fail smiles-all-round brownie recipe? All tips, directions or commiserations will be gratefully received!

Meg