Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream

The theme for this month's Teatime Treats is Chocolate. A pretty wide theme really, so I'm sure there will be lots and lots of delicious submissions to browse when the round up is published. There are lots of chocolate-y things that I've made that I could share for this event, but it seems rather appropriate to share this one. The recipe for the chocolate cake came from Karen at Lavender and Lovage  (one of the co-hosts for TTT which is being hosted this month by Kate at What Kate Baked) and has become one of my favourite chocolate cake recipes. 

It's quick and easy to make and the only ingredient that you might not already have around is the creme fraiche. I've made this cake twice already - once as little cupcakes (quicker than waiting for larger cakes to bake) and once as a two layer cake. Both times were very successful and I think the cakes look very pretty too.

Karen gives the recipe as an all-in-one recipe but I often find that my butter isn't soft enough for an all in one method using a Kitchenaid stand mixer (although it is usually ok with an electric hand mixer) so I have adapted the method slightly. The recipe is reproduced with Karen's permission:

Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream
Ingredients
140g creme fraiche (I used a French style one, it's very thick, solid in fact)
125g unsalted butter
200g light muscovado sugar
1 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
170g plain flour
50g cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder (I think mine was fairly generous)

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas4 . If making a large cake, grease and line two 8"/20cm shallow round cake tins. If making cupcakes, place liners in muffin tins (I made 18 using this recipe).

- Cream together the butter and sugar until the mixture has changed colour and is light and fluffy.

- Add the creme fraiche and continue to mix.

- Add the vanilla, eggs, flour, cocoa powder and baking powder and mix, starting slowly to prevent a cloud of flour enveloping your kitchen.

- When fully mixed divide between the prepared tins/muffin cases and bake for 20-25 minutes for small cakes and 30-40 minutes for larger cakes.

- Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Vanilla buttercream
90g butter
200g icing sugar (plus extra to get desired consistency)
1 tsp vanilla extract

- Beat the butter until very soft (using electric mixers unless you particularly feel in need of a work out) and then add half of the sugar. Starting slowly, beat it until well combined. Add the rest of the sugar and the vanilla extract (or more to taste) and continue to beat until very soft and fluffy. You may need to add a little milk or do as I do and add a little warm water from a boiled kettle.

- Spread or pipe your buttercream as desired.

I love this cake, and the vanilla buttercream complements is beautifully. It isn't that often that I make one recipe twice in close succession but this is a fab recipe and may become my go-to chocolate cake recipe. Yes, it needs creme fraiche, but it isn't a hardship to have creme fraiche in the fridge - it has a long shelf life and if you don't end up using it for chocolate cake it has a multitude of other uses (or a spoon may suffice, perhaps with a chopped banana to assuage lack-of-fruit-and-vitamins thoughts....). It's moist, light and chocolate-y and is very easy to throw together at the last minute. Thanks for a great recipe Karen!

Creme Fraiche Bundt Cake

As I looked in my fridge the other day I realised that the pot of creme fraiche earmarked for mushroom stroganoff and rapidly approaching its use-by date wasn't destined to end up on my dinner plate paired with mushrooms, rice and all manner of other delicious things. No mushrooms for a start.... Time for a rethink, and a visit to BBC Good Food for some quick inspiration.

I didn't find inspiration to use my pot of creme fraiche as it was, but did find a recipe for a sour cream bundt cake. Well, by my logic, both soured cream and creme fraiche are dairy products with an acidic tang and since I had half fat creme fraiche it was a similar fat content to the stipulated soured cream too. The substitution seemed reasonable to me.

I followed the recipe pretty much as given and used my bundt tin that when full to the brim holds 2 litres of water. For the method I creamed butter and sugar as specified but then just added the rest of the ingredients in one go - seems to work fine! My ingredient modifications were to use self raising flour as I wanted more of a rise than I thought plain flour plus the specified tsp of baking powder would give, and I also used a different glaze. The glaze specified in the recipe is a butter one and it just seems to look a little odd from the photo - sort of grainy and split and not very attractive. Instead I decided to use a plain glace icing - 125g (or so, it's always a little vague when making glace icing) plus a little splash of vanilla extract (this gave a rather attractive golden hue to the icing) and some hot water. Judicious addition of the water will give you a glaze that is thin enough to spoon onto the cake, but thick enough to run down the sides attractively.

A very tasty cake - the crumb is quite close and dense in a good way. It was a richly buttery and moist cake, perfect for a slice with a cup of something hot in the middle of the afternoon. The vanilla flavour of the cake was good, but adding vanilla to the icing too really helped with the flavour - the sweetness of the icing was obvious, but the subtle hint of vanilla worked really well.

As this has vanilla in both cake and icing I am submitting it to Alphabakes this month, where the letter is 'V'. Vanilla isn't the most original submission admittedly, but I don't often use vanilla in glace icing - I will be doing in the future though as it worked really well. Alphabakes is hosted this month by Ros at The More than Occasional Baker and cohosted by Caroline of Caroline Makes.

Pam's Chocolate Cake

I'm looking for a fudgy chocolate cake recipe that I can fall back on for special occasions. There are already lots and lots of chocolate cake recipes on this blog (see the index at the side - not yet completed for chocolate but getting there), but thankfully, this doesn't stop me wanting to try new ones! There are just so many delicious looking recipes out there for me to try and this is just one of them.

The recipe is published in Pam Corbin's book 'Cakes'. This is one of the River Cottage series of cookery handbooks, and is full of seriously enticing recipes. It has also got some lovely tips in the getting started chapter on ingredients and then a chapter on filling, topping and decorating too, and is generally a good book to read. Well, if you like reading about cake as much as I do that is.

This cake is entitled simply 'Chocolate Cake' but the delicious looking photo makes the cake rather more enticing that the title would have you believe. I made a couple of small changes and a couple of minor errors in the method too, so this is an adapted version of the cake in the book. I decided to make a half recipe as suggested in the variations at the end of the recipe and bake in the suggested 7"/18cm deep tin (this is another lovely feature of the book - there are often ways you can change the recipe slightly to give a recipe another flavour combo, or serve it in a different way - can you tell I'm a fan?!)

Chocolate Cake (my ingredients)
Ingredients
25g cocoa powder
150g plain flour
1/2tsp baking powder
1/2tsp bicarbonate of soda
90g butter (mine was salted)
50g light brown sugar
50g caster sugar
2 eggs
75g half fat creme fraiche
few tbsp milk (probably about 3)

The original recipe calls for a proportion of ground almonds in the cake, along with either buttermilk or a mixture of milk and yogurt instead of the half fat creme fraiche - guess what I had in the fridge! I made a slight mistake with the method too. I started by creaming the butter and sugar, all well and good, and then added the other ingredients as instructed. When I was pretty much finished I looked at the batter, which was a lovely golden colour and remembered I was supposed to be making chocolate cake. Hmmm! The cocoa powder is mixed with boiling water to a paste and then set aside to cool. Guess who forgot to add it until the last minute? It was supposed to go in after the butter and sugar. Ooops, but no harm done. My cake, in an 18cm tin (I used my new pushpan) was baked in around 40-45 minutes.

I sort of wish I hadn't added the milk, as it curdled the mixture slightly, with being so cold from the fridge and being added at the last minute. Thankfully this didn't seem to matter when it came to eating the cake.

There is a suggested chocolate fudge icing for the cake, but as I ran out of time to make this, I decided to go the simple route and simply split and fill my cake with black cherry jam. As a slight aside, I'm glad it's not just me that has problems with fruity jams with bits in them. Many recipes tell you to allow the jam to cool for a period of time before jarring, to allow the fruit to remain evenly distributed through the whole jar. The makers of Waitrose's Black Cherry conserve hadn't heard this trick and pretty much all of the cherry pieces were in the top third, used for these jammy muffins. So it was effectively cherry jelly that I spread in the middle of my cake. No less delicious for that though!

It was a lovely, soft moist cake. Nice and chocolate-y but not overwhelmingly so. I wonder if adding melted chocolate to the recipe would improve the depth of chocolate flavour. I think I would describe this as an excellent afternoon tea chocolate cake - not too rich and not particularly fudgy or gooey but a good light, moist cake. It was lovely with jam, but would be equally delicious with a more decadent gooey icing.

Triple Chocolate Banana Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

These were born out of the desire to use up various bits and pieces that were lurking in the fridge and around the kitchen. Tiny bit of creme fraiche, check... very overripe banana, check... and so we come to the recipe!

Triple chocolate banana cupcakes
Ingredients
90g butter
130g caster sugar
40g creme fraiche
2 eggs
1 medium banana, mashed
125g self raising flour
25g cocoa powder
1/2tsp baking powder
40g each white and dark chocolate, chopped

Chocolate buttercream to decorate
Dried banana chips to decorate

Method
- Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C. Place 12 liners in a muffin tin.
- Cream together the butter and sugar.
- Add the creme fraiche and eggs and beat well.

- Add the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and mashed banana and fold/beat together until well combined.

- Fold in the chopped chocolate and divide between the paper cases.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes until a cocktail stick comes out clean.

When cool make up the chocolate buttercream (I use about 90g butter and 180g icing sugar plus a little cocoa powder for chocolate colour and flavour) and pipe on in a swirly manner.

I have to confess that these are from the archives and I don't remember very clearly what they tasted like, but soft chocolate sponge dotted with little chunks of chocolate and a hint of banana can't possibly be bad can it! I wouldn't hurry to make them again specifically, but it was an excellent use of ingredients that I couldn't find another use for.

I bought the brown cupcake cases from Lakeland and I haven't been very impressed with them at all. Whichever recipe I cook in them, the buns start to pull away from the cases. I had tried the bun cases in a recipe prior to using them for this one, and having remembered this annoying state of affairs I hedged my bets by only baking six in the brown cases, with six in other cases. As you can see the normal cupcakes are fine. I wonder if anyone else has bought and used these cases (they weren't cheap!) and if you've had problems with them or not? I'd love to hear any comments on this! 

Edited to add: These aren't silicon cupcake cases, they're paper ones, but a smooth case rather than the pleated ones I usually use.

My colleagues were very happy, and these went down very well, in spite of my annoyance regarding cake cases!!!

Pear and ginger creme fraiche cupcakes - Tea Time Treats

These are a different, but equally seasonal take on the clotted cream cupcakes I first blogged just over a year ago. I've made and blogged about them since, noting down how I had changed the recipe and I decided that it was time for them to have another outing, with a few more changes.

I guess that really it was a combination of ingredients looking at me that decided the final recipe, but I think it was a pretty good decision. It's also perfect as my submission this month to Kate and Karen's new challenge - Tea Time Treats. This is pretty much perfect for my blog as everything I make would be lovely at tea time, so I'm really looking forward to participating! The challenge is going to be hosted alternate months by Kate of What Kate Baked, and Karen of Lavender and Lovage. This month is Karen's turn and the theme is Ginger and bonfire treats. I think that with the combo of seasonal pears and warming ginger, these cupcakes are a great submission! You can find more info on the challenge here.

I had pears and creme fraiche and where the original recipe uses jam, I had a jar of ginger conserve and because pears and ginger are such a good match, better than any of the jam I had open and to hand (although actually, I think I have some rhubarb jam somewhere that would be a good combination.... hold that thought!) I decided to go with pear and ginger.

Pear and ginger creme fraiche cupcakes
Ingredients
50g butter, softened
115g full fat creme fraiche
150g caster sugar
2 eggs
300g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground ginger
2 pears, peeled, cored and chopped small (mine were very ripe) - see method
115g ginger conserve
milk (optional, see method)

Method

- Preheat the oven to 190C/Gas 5. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with papers.

- Beat together the butter and creme fraiche, mine was still rather lumpy, and remained so throughout.

- Add the sugar and beat well, then add the eggs one at a time, beating well in between adding the eggs.

- Add the flour, baking powder, ground ginger and a good slosh of water (you could use milk, but I didn't have any open) and beat well to combine.

- Add the pears and mix in. I actually waited until this stage before peeling and chopping them, to prevent them browning too much.

- Divide half of the mixture between the cases, then top each with a blob of the ginger conserve. Finish by dividing the remaining mixture between the cases.

- Bake for 25 minutes until risen and golden.

- Allow to cool on a wire rack.

I topped these with a simple water icing, as I wanted a little extra sweetness, but nothing to compete with the flavours of the cupcakes.

They were really nice, the ginger conserve stayed put in the centre of the cupcakes, which is exactly what I wanted. My only slight issue with them is that they weren't gingery enough! Next time I'll add some more ground ginger to the cupcakes, and perhaps use either chopped crystallised stem ginger to perk up the conserve, or just use some chopped stem ginger and mix it with a little of its syrup to put into the middles, for a real ginger hit! I must also remember that much as I like pear, it does have a tendency to disappear when baked into this kind of cake. Next time the chunks might be a little bigger, and I'll try and remember to use under-ripe rather than over-ripe pears as I think they'll keep their shape and texture in the final cake.

Pear and ginger buttermilk muffins

These came about because I had a surfeit of various ingredients that I wanted to get rid of make into something delicious. First on the agenda - half a carton of buttermilk. Next up, a half used tub of half fat creme fraiche. Thirdly, some rather ripe pears that I am singularly failing to eat in raw-fruit-good-for-you form. Finally, crystallised stem ginger. I suppose the last one didn't really need using up as such, but with it being autumn now, spice seems right and the pear/ginger combo appealed.

I based my muffins on a buttermilk muffin recipe in a little book I have had for years, Susan Reimer's 'Muffins - fast and fantastic'. But I've adapted the recipe so much I very much doubt the author would recognise it.

Pear and ginger buttermilk muffins
Ingredients
300g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
90g white caster sugar
2 tsp ground ginger
1 egg
130ml buttermilk
90g half fat creme fraiche
80ml water
85g unsalted butter, melted
90g crystallised stem ginger, chopped

2 small ripe pears (I used conference, and they weighed 180g before peeling) peeled, cored and chopped

demerara sugar for sprinkling

Method
- Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas 6. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with papers.
- Sift together the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda. Stir in the ground ginger and sugar.
- Mix together the wet ingredients, beating the egg into them.
- Melt the butter.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix to almost combine.
- Add the chopped pear and ginger and continue until just mixed.

- Divide between the cases, scatter with demerara sugar and bake for 25 minutes until well risen and golden brown.

These were lovely - full of juicy chunks of ripe pear and little nubbles of crystallised stem ginger. Yum! I have to admit that they weren't quite gingery enough for me, in spite of having used 2tsp ground ginger in them. Perhaps a tbsp would have been better. They were nice and gingery when you encountered one of the (frequent) chunks of stem ginger though - yum! The pear is very subtle - I wonder if using tinned pear would up the pear flavour a little as it was more of a texture (a good one though!) in these muffins.

Tasty and warming for a cold autumn day.

Wholemeal orange chocolate scones

These are largely inspired by Choclette's recent (well, fairly recent!) chocolate scones here. Rooting around in the fridge I discovered that I had yet another tub of half fat creme fraiche that needed to be used as soon as possible. See also here and here (will I never learn - apparently not given that I know there's another tub of the stuff in the fridge as I type). Since scones are often made with buttermilk, an acidic liquid, I reckoned that I could use my creme fraiche for the same purpose. I liked Choclette's idea of adding chocolate to scones and her idea of using partly wholemeal flour and I also found some candied peel in need of using so I created a recipe to suit my needs.

Wholemeal orange chocolate scones

Ingredients

150g self raising flour

150g wholemeal self raising flour

50g butter

35g caster sugar (plus extra demerara for sprinkling on the tops)

40g dark chocolate with candied orange peel, broken into tiny pieces

35g candied peel, snipped finely with scissors

200ml low fat creme fraiche (I used Yeo Valley) plus some water to slacken

Method

- Preheat the oven to gas 6 1/2/210 C. Line a baking tray with parchment.

- Mix the flours in a large bowl and rub in the butter. Mix in the sugar.

- Mix in the chopped peel and chocolate.

- Pour in the creme fraiche and a few tablespoons of water to get the creme fraiche to a more buttermilk like consistency. I'm afraid I just did this by eye and added a little more water until the dough felt a little sticky.

- Bring the dough together and tip onto a floured work surface. Pat out not too thinly and cut out your scones. I used a 2"/5cm cutter and got about 17.

- Dampen the surfaces of the scones with a little milk or water and sprinkle with demerara sugar.

- Bake for 18-20 minutes until lightly golden brown. Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Enjoy, preferably warm with butter.

The creme fraiche worked well enough in these, but to be honest, they weren't my favourite recent bake. I'm not sure why I'm not that enamoured of them, the scones were light and fluffy, if a little on the shallow side (my fault for patting out too thinly I think). I think that the chocolate and orange flavours didn't quite go with the wholemeal flour but I can't put my finger on quite why. My colleagues didn't seem to mind though, and these went quickly.

Edited to add: these are nice, it's just that they're not my favourite - lots of other people liked them....

Crunchy banana spice cake

I like to think of this kind of cake as 'everyday cake'. It's the kind of cake that is fabulous to have in the cake tin for when your kids come home from school starving hungry and wanting a sweet treat - but you want to feel that they aren't eating rubbish. Or the kind of cake that will stave off the biscuit cravings - perfect with a cup of tea, but whereas a small slice of cake seems to be sufficient and even a treat, two biscuits just won't hit the spot - it needs to be a small pile (or half the packet....). This way you can feel virtuous - you're getting some of your five a day (OK, there are better ways to do it, but humour me) and it's full of wholegrains too.

The recipe came about because in an attempt to waste less food (an ongoing task made difficult by my inability to resist buying things in supermarkets...) I wanted to use a tub of low fat creme fraiche approaching its 'use-by' date and I had a banana too ripe for me to happily consume it on its own. The wholemeal flour was idle curiosity rather than New-Year-health-kick - I'm interested to see how cakes turn out with wholemeal rather than white flour. I should say that Choclette over at Chocolate Log Blog has definitely made me think about using more interesting flours in my baking - she's got some inspirational ideas on her blog using loads of different flours, and Katie over at Apple and Spice, who has embraced gluten-free baking (having recently been diagnosed with coeliac disease) with a speed and success rate that I'm totally in awe of - spectacular baking apparently doesn't need wheat at all if, like Katie, you know what you're doing and enjoy experimenting!

As I was spooning the cake batter into the tin, I spotted a packet of large grained sugar sitting on the side, calling to me to be used. I think this sugar was possibly the making of this cake. It would have been delicious without, but the layer of sugar on the top added a great contrasting crunch to the moist, soft cake. The picture above shows the brand of sugar I used, and below is a comparison between the size of the grains of sugar that I used, on the left, and demerara sugar (turbinado sugar for US readers), on the right. The grains are much, much bigger than demerara.

So to the recipe...

Crunchy Banana Spice Cake
Ingredients
100g butter, softened
120g light muscovado sugar
120g wholemeal self raising flour
1 medium size ripe banana
1 tsp mixed spice
1 egg
85g low fat creme fraiche (I used Yeo Valley brand which doesn't have any added stabilisers or other ingredients)

Sugar for dredging - see above!

Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and base line an 8" round cake tin.
- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add the banana, broken into chunks, and beat again until well amalgamated.
- Add the egg, flour, spice and creme fraiche and beat until well combined.
- Spoon into the prepared tin, level the surface and dredge with the grain sugar.
- Bake for 35-40 minutes until the cake is springy and a cake tester comes out clean.
- Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Cut into generous wedges and enjoy!

I would definitely make this again but next time, I'd double the recipe and make two cakes so that it was a layer cake, perhaps with a buttercream filling, to make a more spectacular looking cake. Popular with colleagues, this one went quickly in spite of its relatively frugal appearance. It was light but still moist and I think that the combination of wholemeal flour and muscovado sugar gave it a depth of flavour that I don't usually get. The spice was fairly subtle, as was the banana flavour. No one flavour dominated, and it was a lovely, balanced cake.