4th Theme for the Cookbook Challenge is Love. Honestly I was a bit stuck with this theme. How am I going to link the food with Love? Something which I love eating? A dish which uses a ingredient which I love?
I started seeing others who written about the meal they cooked for Valentine day. I didn't cook anything special. Just steak with 2 sides which all the ingredients were purchased from the Farmers Market the day before and yes I did try new recipe for the 2 sides but I didn't manage to take any photos. So fail big time :-(
Then it occurred to me, I haven't got the chance to blog about the birthday cake which I made for myself. It was the 1st time I used the recipe. It's a bakecook which I seldom used. I used my birthday present to make the cake which I loved! The present was from my lovely husband. Should fit in the theme right? Or it's still consider cheating??
Mr. kept requesting me to bake my own birthday cake a week or two before the actual day. That is actually pretty unusual! Being together for more than a decade, he had never made such request even for his own birthday. Smell something fishy!!!
A few days before my birthday, I accidentally saw Mr. checking out the KitchenAid website. A stand mixer as gift??? That was my guess as he knows that's one of the many kitchenwares I wanted to add to my kitchen but price was holding me back.
Two days before my birthday, Mr started to hint me about the gift. He even allowed to let me search the house and I can open it if I find it. But he never expected me to find it in less than 1 min!!! Although the house area is pretty big but areas to hid something from each other is pretty limited.
With just a big box + super heavy, I knew it must be the KA stand mixer!!!! Yeah!!! Finally I own it!!!! Plus I love the bright red colour!!!
As there's isn't any discount, Smatchbox gave a free cookbook and offered Mr. the latest edition KitchenAid cookbook. I had flipped thru the book but hadn't got around to try it. What surprised me was it didn't contain much baking recipes at all! A handful of bread making recipes and rest were mostly cooking recipes.
It didn't take me long before having a play with the new toy. On my birthday eve, I baked a tray of chocolate cupcake for work. I was falling in love with my toy. I was learning about my toy.
On my birthday, I started immediately baking my birthday cake once I got home from work. I even managed to document the process.
Cake for the occasion : Flourless Hazelnut Chocolate Cake
Bakebook : Crave a passion for chocolate
Author : Maureen McKeon
Ingredients
300 g chopped dark chocolate
100g unsalted butter
7 large eggs, separated
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
115g caster sugar
80g ground hazelnut
Method
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees. Butter a 23cm (9 inch) springform tin or deep round cake tin and line in with baking paper.
Melt chocolate and butter gently in a heatproof bowl over hot water, ensuring that the base does not touch the water.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool.
Using an electric mixer, beat the egg yolks for 1-2 mins, or until pale and thick and ribbons form when the beaters are lifted out of the mixture.
Using clean beaters, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar in a large bowl until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in the sugar, then continue beating until the mixture is stiff but not dry.
Combine the egg yolks and melting chocolate mixture and beat gently. Using a rubber spatula, fold half the meringue into the chocolate mixture, then return this combined mixture to the remaining meringue. Add the ground hazelnuts and fold in gently until combined.
Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 50-55mins, or until the cake comes away slightly from the side of the tin. Allow to cool completely in the tin before turning out.
The cake actually raised a lot during baking. Lucky I laid the baking paper above the tin height as you can see from the photo below. But it started to sink once I took it out from the oven. What did I do wrong?? Over mixed?
It looked all fine when I turnover the cake. Yes it looked ugly but it taste really nice. It was still moist inside :-)
We had it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Just the way we like it.
5 comments:
Happy Birthday! Your birthday pressie looks beautiful! I want one too! This recipe looks really wonderful too! I can imagine how rich this cake is :) This is the real deal! How can any cake that uses 300g of choc and ground hazelnut not taste good:)
My birthday is 3 months ago but Thanks! Oh yeah! Mr. being pampering me alot for the past 2 years....he will be scratching his head for the next present...HAHA
It definitely fits the theme - it's all up to your interpretation anyway. Congrats on the beautiful KA :D
Thanks Agnes....definitely will try to do all the themes. Not sure how well it will go when I'm away.
what a great story - am sure there is lots of love in it - and you can't go wrong with chocolate when it comes to love - sounds just my sort of chocolate cake - I find that these sort of cakes tend to sink and in fact are even better for a slightly gooey centre so I don't think you did anything wrong - sounds perfect - just not the sort of cake to stand tall! (and I am jealous of your KA)
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