I had begrudgingly accepted this devastating news only to see, to my sheer delight, that there was a repeat of the missed episode showing this morning! Things like this never happen to me, so please excuse my elation over a television programme that most people probably miss anyway because they are living actual lives.
The first episode of this gastronomic orgy was themed around “cakes”. For me, baking is exactly that: cakes, buns, cupcakes, brownies and everything so irritatingly bijou in between. So, in week two when the theme was pastry (snore), I had big old hopes for week three. So, on I turn the telly, ready to be yanked out of my sugar lull, only to find that this week’s theme is bread. BOR-ING*.
Now, I like baking (cakes and brownies, not bread and pies) and I think this is because my parents, like many well-meaning parents, used baking as an introduction to real cooking. You know, we will show our thirteen year old how to make butterfly cakes and then once he has mastered that, we can get him started on a Sunday roast meaning he will actually be useful to have around the house!
Only, much to my mother’s dismay, I never actually graduated from baking school because really, I thought that that was the most exiting part! You see, you don’t give your child their pudding before they’ve eaten their main because as every good parent knows, you use the pudding to BRIBE the child to eat their main course first. Following this logic, I should have been made to learn the sensible stuff first ie: actual useful, nutritional cooking and then rewarded for my new skills with baking classes.
But you can only work with the skills what you was given, right?** So, for my first act I would like to introduce to you Nigella’s Devil’s Food Cake. This is what I like to refer to as Proper Baking. I must confess that I have not made this cake recently and it was only when I was flicking through pictures on my BlackBerry desperately trying to find something I had once baked that actually turned out well that I remembered this little dishy dish. Let me tell you though, this should not lessen your enthusiasm to go right out and bake this cake.
I like this cake primarily for these two reasons:
1. It actually comes out looking in some way similar to the picture on the recipe. This should of course be the case with all recipe book photographs but I bet a tenner (bit broke, sorry) that I am not the only wide-eyed beginner cook who has been brought back down to earth with a bump; an unrecognisable mush appearing from the oven while you rush frantically back to the page in the recipe book, re-reading the measurements and directions and making sure you have not accidently stuck two pages of the book together like Rachel in that episode of Friends. Yet everything looks fine and so you just resign yourself to the fact that you obviously do not have the skill required to make excellent looking food.
2. It is actually rich and chocolaty. Many bakers, I am sure, have mastered this concept before. However, I have always failed to make a proper chocolate cake because my usual method has just been to replace a bit of flour with some drinking chocolate. This results in a cake the colour of dishwater which I smother in chocolate and pass off as chocolate cake.
I am taking Nigella’s recipe verbatim from here (it also has a very nice picture, much better quality than mine). Many food blogs I read take a famous chef’s recipe and then post their amended versions with an extra pinch of this or a little less of that. I am not too proud to say that I am definitely not at this stage yet. Any amendments would, I am confident, end in disaster.
Please, if you try this, do let me know how you get on.
INGREDIENTS
• for the cake:
• 50g best-quality cocoa powder, sifted
• 100g dark muscovado sugar
• 250ml boiling water
• 125g soft unsalted butter, plus some for greasing
• 150g caster sugar
• 225g plain flour
• 1⁄2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1⁄2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• for the frosting:
• 125ml water
• 30g dark muscovado sugar
• 175g unsalted butter cubed
• 300g best-quality dark chocolate finely chopped
• 2 x 20cm sandwich tins
METHOD
Serves: 10 - 12
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4.
2. Line the bottoms of both sandwich tins with baking parchment and butter the sides.
3. Put the cocoa and 100g dark muscovado sugar into a bowl with a bit of space to spare, and pour in the boiling water. Whisk to mix, then set aside.
4. Cream the butter and caster sugar together, beating well until pale and fluffy; I find this easiest with a freestanding mixer, but by hand wouldn’t kill you.
5. While this is going on – or as soon as you stop if you’re mixing by hand – stir the flour, baking powder and bicarb together in another bowl, and set aside for a moment.
6. Dribble the vanilla extract into the creamed butter and sugar – mixing all the while – then drop in 1 egg, quickly followed by a scoopful of flour mixture, then the second egg.
7. Keep mixing and incorporate the rest of the dried ingredients for the cake, then finally mix and fold in the cocoa mixture, scraping its bowl well with a spatula.
8. Divide this fabulously chocolatey batter between the 2 prepared tins and put in the oven for about 30 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean.
9. Take the tins out and leave them on a wire rack for 5–10 minutes, before turning the cakes out to cool.
10. But as soon as the cakes are in the oven, get started on your frosting: put the water, 30g muscovado sugar and 175g butter in a pan over a low heat to melt.
11. When this mixture begins to bubble, take the pan off the heat and add the chopped chocolate, swirling the pan so that all the chocolate is hit with heat, then leave for a minute to melt before whisking till smooth and glossy.
12. Leave for about 1 hour, whisking now and again – when you’re passing the pan – by which time the cakes will be cooled, and ready for the frosting.
13. Set one of the cooled cakes, with its top side down, on a cake stand or plate, and spread with about a third of the frosting, then top that with the second cake, regular way up, and spread the remaining frosting over the top and sides, swirling away with your spatula. You can go for a smooth look, but I never do and probably couldn’t.
* Despite my mini-strop, I still watched these episodes in awe. Of course, I am only being bitter about bread and pies because I have never tried to make them. Hopefully this will change now I have a blog to MAKE me cook.
** I am in no way criticising my parents. I have a very sweet tooth and my mother has attempted to teach me to cook many times but I have always been an ungrateful child who has preferred to gorge on sticky toffee puddings in a corner somewhere.
INGREDIENTS
• for the cake:
• 50g best-quality cocoa powder, sifted
• 100g dark muscovado sugar
• 250ml boiling water
• 125g soft unsalted butter, plus some for greasing
• 150g caster sugar
• 225g plain flour
• 1⁄2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1⁄2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• for the frosting:
• 125ml water
• 30g dark muscovado sugar
• 175g unsalted butter cubed
• 300g best-quality dark chocolate finely chopped
• 2 x 20cm sandwich tins
METHOD
Serves: 10 - 12
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4.
2. Line the bottoms of both sandwich tins with baking parchment and butter the sides.
3. Put the cocoa and 100g dark muscovado sugar into a bowl with a bit of space to spare, and pour in the boiling water. Whisk to mix, then set aside.
4. Cream the butter and caster sugar together, beating well until pale and fluffy; I find this easiest with a freestanding mixer, but by hand wouldn’t kill you.
5. While this is going on – or as soon as you stop if you’re mixing by hand – stir the flour, baking powder and bicarb together in another bowl, and set aside for a moment.
6. Dribble the vanilla extract into the creamed butter and sugar – mixing all the while – then drop in 1 egg, quickly followed by a scoopful of flour mixture, then the second egg.
7. Keep mixing and incorporate the rest of the dried ingredients for the cake, then finally mix and fold in the cocoa mixture, scraping its bowl well with a spatula.
8. Divide this fabulously chocolatey batter between the 2 prepared tins and put in the oven for about 30 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean.
9. Take the tins out and leave them on a wire rack for 5–10 minutes, before turning the cakes out to cool.
10. But as soon as the cakes are in the oven, get started on your frosting: put the water, 30g muscovado sugar and 175g butter in a pan over a low heat to melt.
11. When this mixture begins to bubble, take the pan off the heat and add the chopped chocolate, swirling the pan so that all the chocolate is hit with heat, then leave for a minute to melt before whisking till smooth and glossy.
12. Leave for about 1 hour, whisking now and again – when you’re passing the pan – by which time the cakes will be cooled, and ready for the frosting.
13. Set one of the cooled cakes, with its top side down, on a cake stand or plate, and spread with about a third of the frosting, then top that with the second cake, regular way up, and spread the remaining frosting over the top and sides, swirling away with your spatula. You can go for a smooth look, but I never do and probably couldn’t.
* Despite my mini-strop, I still watched these episodes in awe. Of course, I am only being bitter about bread and pies because I have never tried to make them. Hopefully this will change now I have a blog to MAKE me cook.
** I am in no way criticising my parents. I have a very sweet tooth and my mother has attempted to teach me to cook many times but I have always been an ungrateful child who has preferred to gorge on sticky toffee puddings in a corner somewhere.
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