The Alchemist's Chocolate Cake

I have wanted to make this cake for such a long time, and really don't know why I haven't got round to it before now. The recipe was first published in the Guardian here, in June 2008. Why, oh why haven't I made it before now? And indeed, why now after all this time? Well, this is one of the three cakes in this week's Short and Tweet challenge - there are some choices of what to make each week from now on. You can see the January schedule here. So again, thanks go to @EvidenceMatters for the prompt and prod to finally get round to making this cake. I won't be doing the other two cakes for this week though - I don't do coconut and the Saffron Peach cake, delicious though it sounds, relies on almonds for flavour and texture to an extent that I can't really sub them out.

There are some small changes from the online recipe to the one printed in Short and Sweet, and I used the book version - you'll have to buy it to find out what they are, presumably Dan tweaked it to make a better cake before publishing it in printed book form.

The alchemy of the name presumably comes from the making of a delicious, moist, marvellously chocolatey cake (can you tell that I liked this one yet?!) that is very low in fat (only 50ml of fat in the whole cake!) but doesn't taste in the slightest bit 'worthy'.

It was nice and straightforward to make - one of those cakes where it's almost more work to line the tin than make the cake (note to self, buy some of those handy silicon cake tin liners from Lakeland!) but I found that mine needed quite a bit longer for me to be sure that it was cooked. I think that actually, it possibly was cooked at the time specified in the recipe, but I probably left it about 20 minutes longer, covered with foil, to make sure it was done. The moistness doesn't seem to have suffered from this prolonged stay in the oven. The only substitution I made was to use a light olive oil instead of the specified walnut oil, for allergy reasons. Perhaps I did lose a little of the subtle flavour, but at least I could eat the cake!!!

The crumb is quite sturdy, which is perfect for me to take to work. I guess that the removal of fat means that a soft, crumbly crumb is the forfeit. I suppose I could have used some of my chocolate essence to enhance the chocolatey flavours, and maybe next time, but for the first time I just wanted to experience the cake as it was intended. The cake was lovely and chocolatey and I couldn't really taste pears at all, which I guess is the idea. I could detect a slight graininess from the pears though, which I didn't mind, as I knew what it was, but I suppose it might be slightly odd if you didn't know where it had come from.

The day after it was baked it had developed a very shiny surface. Not sure why this was, but it was actually quite pretty. I cut my cake into 16 (anticipating work colleagues not wanting cake at this time of year!) and this means that a slice of cake works out at fewer calories than two digestive biscuits. And who would choose to eat two boring digestives when they could have a slice of delicious chocolate cake instead!!!

So, since this is positively health food I'm also submitting it as my 'We Should Cocoa' entry this month. Chele at Chocolate Teapot is our host for January and the theme is chocolate with a health concious slant. I think this fits the bill perfectly!

Since I've genuinely had this bookmarked for years and years, I'm entering it into Jac's Bookmarked Recipes linky over at Tinned Tomatoes. I'm very glad I finally got round to making it and would recommend it.

Roast plum sorbet

Firstly, remember that you can still win a copy of The Great British Bake Off - How to Bake .... by going here. Right, now onto the rest of the post!

I have a terrible confession to make. I am lucky enough to own a lovely freestanding icecream maker (like this one), bought as a birthday present by my parents when I was 21. I don't use it very often. I like ice-cream, but the palaver of making sure it's clean and preparing the mixture to freeze means that it rarely gets used. Add to this the distinct lack of summer sunshine in my part of the UK and you'll start to understand why this amazing machine is sadly neglected. I hang my head in shame.

However, J has friends with plum trees and at this time of year they are laden with fruit, ripe for the picking before the wasps get the lions share (although J's friend P has more plums than even the wasps can eat!!!). J is therefore often over-run with plums and after jamming pounds and pounds of them, made this plum sorbet recipe published recently in the Guardian newspaper. However, she didn't find the recipe that brilliant, so I've learnt from her experience and gone a slightly different route. The recipe published online has 2kg of plums, whereas the recipe in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Everyday recipe book has only 1kg of plums with the amounts of the other ingredients all the same. After J's comments that her sorbet wasn't very sweet, I decided to use the ratio of sugar:fruit for the smaller quantity of plums. And since I don't want to be eating this forever, I also halved the recipe. I found when tasting the puree before freezing that it needed more sugar. Don't be afraid of adding more sugar to taste - in fact, you want the puree over-sweetened before freezing as the freezing process dulls the flavour and sweetness. I also used vanilla extract because vanilla pods are horrendously expensive!!!

Roast plum sorbet

Ingredients

400g red British plums

50g caster sugar

1/2tsp vanilla extract

icing sugar to taste (I used 15g)

Method

- Preheat the oven to gas 6/200C.

- Wash and halve the plums, remove the stones and place in the baking tray. Sprinkle over 50g caster sugar and add 125ml water (I used some that had just boiled).

- Roast for around 30 minutes until very soft. Don't leave them in the oven whilst baking a cake meaning that you can't check on them....otherwise they char a little. No harm done though....

- Pass the plums and roasting juices through a sieve. I found this pretty quick and easy, but I know J found it took her ages. I think my plums were very ripe and soft by this stage.

- Taste and add more sugar until it is slightly too sweet. This is deliberate because freezing will dull both the flavours and the sweetness of the mixture.

- Add the vanilla extract and allow to cool completely.

- Churn in an ice-cream maker following the manufacturers instructions. I allowed mine to pre-cool for around 10 minutes and then churned the sorbet until I could no longer stand the horrific noise the motor seemed to be making whilst churning the mixture. I think this was just over 10 minutes, and the mixture seemed to be starting to set.

- Transfer to a clean plastic container and freeze until firm.

I should really, really make more use of my fantastic ice-cream maker! The taste of this sorbet seems to be the essence of plums and it's such a beautiful colour too. The colour will obviously depend on the variety of plum you use, but as there are some gorgeous British plums available at the moment I would urge you to make this. The sorbet tasted really creamy and rich and J commented that it was much smoother than hers, even though she had taken hers out three times to beat it whilst freezing - I guess having an ice-cream maker does make a difference. I can't believe that something as simple as a combination of fruit and sugar can taste so good. The vanilla flavour wasn't obvious, which I was pleased about and roasting the fruit seems to have intensified the flavour. When I was roasting my plums they caught a little, but I discarded this bit and it doesn't seem to have affected the taste of the rest of the mixture. Mmm, yum, sorbet!

Raspberry oat traybake

These were a very quick and easy bake that I spotted in a recent issue of BBC Good Food magazine. They ticked all the boxes - super quick to make and bake, reasonably cheap to make (especially if you use frozen fruit) and fairly healthy to boot. Well, they only contain 50g of butter for the entire tray, and they've got fresh fruit and oats too so although they aren't as healthy as say, a piece of fruit, you could certainly do worse!

I adapted the recipe slightly, and as I said, I used frozen fruit. I allowed it to thaw first, before mushing it up as stated in the recipe. You can find the original recipe here.

Raspberry oat traybake
Ingredients
200g rolled oats
50g medium oatmeal
150g raspberries, thawed if frozen, then mashed to break them up
1/2tsp vanilla extract
50g butter
75g runny honey

Method
- Grease and line an 8" square tin (20x20cm). Preheat the oven to gas 7/220C.
- Melt the butter and honey over a gentle heat.
- Mix in the oats, oatmeal and vanilla if using.
- Spread about half of the mixture into the tin and press down.
- Spread over the raspberries and then sprinkle/spread over the remaining oat mixture.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden and crispy.

I used a mild honey, so it wasn't too obvious in flavour. I wouldn't bother adding the vanilla again, it got lost in the other flavours, although I had thought it would go well with raspberries. I think I baked mine at gas 6 rather than gas 7, but can't honestly remember, which is a pity because they were indeed browned at 12 minutes, as suggested by the recipe. Perhaps I did use gas 7 then...

I think next time I'll use more fruit because 150g only gave a very thin covering. I also used slightly more than half of the mixture to cover the base, and then sprinkled everything that was left over the top.

As you can imagine, without very much fat to hold them together they were very crumbly. Not so that you couldn't pick up a piece, but you had to be careful. I really liked them and can see them becoming quite a regular quick bake for when I can't think what else to make - they made a perfect small midmorning snack. I think they'd also be great with blackberries (though you'd have to make sure to squash them up well, and might need 200g to get a layer), or perhaps even very finely chopped stone fruit like apricots or nectarines. All sorts of possibilities!

Blueberry orange yogurt scones

Inspired by Johanna's recent post about her scones, and by Choclette's recent chocolate chip scones, I decided it was long overdue for me to make some more of these delicious treats. I particularly enjoy scones because they're so good for snacks and seem a good way to have a sweet treat without too much fat or sugar.

I had a large pot of yogurt in the fridge that really needed to be used up and recalled that a few months ago Sainsbury's magazine had a feature written by Dan Lepard for scones. There's a basic recipe and then various sweet and savoury variations; blueberry clementine, triple-chocolate pecan, double ginger and apple, almond cherry and then savoury red chilli and tomato, onion, herb and bacon. I can't say the savoury ones are anything I'd usually want to try but the tomato based ones look really good! So, taking inspiration from the blueberry clementine recipe, I decided to make blueberry orange flavoured scones.

I've adapted the recipe a bit to suit what I had available (who has 25ml of double cream hanging round? and what do I do with the rest of the pot once it's open? that ingredient went pretty quickly!). The original recipes can be found in the November 2010 issue of the Sainsbury's magazine.

Blueberry and orange yogurt scones

Ingredients

175g wholemilk yogurt

75g caster sugar

400g plain flour

2 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

50g cold diced butter

zest of 1 large orange plus 50ml juice (but see below)

100g dried sweetened blueberries

Method

- Preheat the oven to gas 6 1/2/210C. Put a piece of baking parchment on a tray.

- Stir the sugar into the yogurt and leave for a few minutes to dissolve.

- Sift (and I actually did - normally too lazy) the flour, bicarb and cream of tartar into a large bowl.

- Rub in the butter, then add the dried blueberries and stir to mix.

- Zest the orange into the yogurt mixture and add the juice to this.

- Mix the wet ingredients into the dry and bring together to form a dough. At this point I thought it looked a little dry, but persevered, turning the dough out and trying to form it, but ended up putting it back in the bowl to add some more liquid. I think it needs about 2tbsp more liquid than stated in the ingredients above.

- Pat out to about an inch and a half thick and cut out scones in the size you choose. I used a small cutter (2 inch) and got 19 normal scones and a massive offcut scone!

- Moisten the tops a little (I used water here) and sprinkle with demerara sugar.

- Bake for about 12-15 minutes until lightly golden brown.

- Allow to cool on a wire rack, or eat warm if you really can't wait!

This recipe differs quite a bit to my usual recipe. I usually use self raising flour rather than plain plus raising agents and more butter but less sugar. They were reasonably successful but I didn't think they were quite as light as my usual ones. However, this could be due to me overworking the dough with it being initially too dry and having to add more liquid. The flavours were great though - dried blueberries are delicious, it's just a pity they're so expensive usually, and the orange flavour made them interesting enough to eat without butter, although served slightly warmed and with butter would be my favourite way to eat these. I ought to give the recipe another go, perhaps the apple and ginger variation - two of my favourite ingredients!

Cinnamon and apple tea bread

One of my colleagues recently remarked that I must spend a fortune on ingredients with all the baking I do. This is true, but since I regard it as my hobby I don't really mind - there are worse things to spend my money on and generally quite enjoy baking. And although blog activity doesn't really reflect this, I have been doing quite a lot of baking recently. Anyway, my lovely colleague gave me some ingredients that she thought I might be able/like to use. (I can't quite tell if it was motivated by the desire to eat these ingredients in cake form, but even if it was, I don't mind in the slightest - any gift is welcome!!!)

One of these ingredients was a bag of mixed dried fruit that needed to be used quite quickly. I have to admit that I don't usually buy mixed dried fruit bags. One of the reasons is the inclusion of the hideous chopped mixed peel that you usually find (candied peel that you chop yourself is a whole different matter, and quite delicious) but luckily this mix didn't include that. And before you ask, yes, I probably would have sat and picked it all out if there had been peel in there! This one was sold as 'American Style Fruit Mix'. I'm not quite sure what that means but perhaps somebody kind from over the pond will tell me whether or not a mix of chopped dates, raisins, sultanas and sweetened dried apple with cinnamon is a typical mix? Anyway, that's what this one contained.

Edited to add: It's this fruit mix here, I think my colleague must shop in Morrisons!

The mixture seemed to lend itself well to a tea bread and instead of the ones I have made here before, I decided to go with a tried and trusted favourite, one that J has been making for years. It was originally clipped out of the Guardian many, many years ago (and is by Katie Stewart in its original form) and has now been much modified and well used and loved. So here is the latest incarnation.

Cinnamon and apple tea bread

Ingredients

250g 'American Style Fruit Mix'

(or 75g chopped dates, 62g raisins, 62g sultanas, 50g dried apple, chopped)

200g glace cherries, chopped

425ml cold tea (although I used hot tea, couldn't find time to wait for it to cool!)

300g light muscovado sugar *** see note below

2 eggs, beaten

420g self raising flour

1 tsp cinnamon (or more if your dried fruit mix doesn't already contain cinnamon)

Method

- Make up tea (I used two tea bags and squidged them about a bit - you want strong tea here). Add the sugar and dried fruit, mix, cover with cling film and leave overnight.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

- Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C and grease and line two 2lb/900g loaf tins.

- Add the glace cherries (though you could do this the night before if it's easier) and mix well to mix the cherries through and redistribute the sugar, which tends to settle at the bottom of the bowl overnight.

- Add the flour and beaten eggs and beat well to combine.

- Divide between two tins and bake for 55 minutes. A wooden cocktail stick inserted should come out clean.

- Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.

*** I realised as I was typing this up that I had decided when soaking the fruit that I would make the original quantity of mix (2/3 of the quantity stated) but then changed my mind and went for J's option of 1.5x mix quantity. I forgot to increase the sugar though. This is why it's never a good idea to write down recipes with 1.5x at the top and not amend the amounts, or decide half way through to amend the recipe without thinking the whole thing through. D'oh. Last time J made this she forgot to increase the flour and realised just after pouring the mix into the prepared tins that this was the reason it was so runny. She salvaged it fine, but I didn't realise until far too late about the sugar!

Great served buttered (see above!!!) but good all on its own. This type of (virtually, if you're being fussy about egg yolks and flour containing some fat) fat free tea bread always goes down well round these parts and this one is no exception. Lovely and moist and perfect at morning tea break. I have to admit that I couldn't really taste the dates as an individual flavour and wouldn't have known the dried apple pieces were there unless you'd told me. Nevertheless, the cinnamon flavour was great and made a bit of a change from my normal flavours in this recipe.