Speaking of of chocolate cake....

Yesterday was my birthday, so I took the opportunity to try out two cake ideas I had. One was trying my favorite simple white layered cake recipe with raspberries and a nice decoration. The other was to try my favorite chocolate cake with some orange juice, orange peel and a large amount of Cointreau thus to yield a chocolate cake infused with some intense orange aroma. Furthermore, I wanted to combine this with a thin, very dark and bright chocolate icing. I'm giving the recipes below exactly as I made them. The original recipes are from an old, well-known Turkish cookbook called Bereketli Olsun, probably the book most young people take with them when they leave home, because so many recipes our mothers make come from this book. The pictures could have been way better, the one above is the one I made this morning. The ones of yesterday are quite blurry, that's what happens when you start making photos after a few glasses of wine!!!




Raspberry Layer Cake

6 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup + 2 tbsp flour
1 tbsp lemon juice
lemon peel
vanilla sugar
round cake mold of 26cm diameter

Butter the cake mold (I line it first with parchment paper). Heat the oven to 185 degrees. Pass the flour through a thin sieve and set is aside (you can use the special sieves sold for this purpose but I just use a regular all-purpose one). Beat the sugar and the eggs until the mixture is very thick and quite white (around 10 minutes at highest speed of the mixer). Add lemon peel, lemon juice and vanilla sugar and mix shortly. Then take a wooden spoon and stir the flour through the cake with swift upward movements. The idea is not to make the cake be pressed too much, losing all the air we just pumped into it while mixing. This is quite important for the rising ot the case, especially if you live somewhere close to sea level like me, you have to be even more careful. As soon as all the flour has been stirred into the cake mixture, pour the mixture into the mold and bake in the oven. The total baking time takes around half hour. Try not to open the oven in the first 20 minutes, as this can stop the cake rising. Also, it is useful to give the heat only from the bottom for the first 5-10 minutes. After around 25 minutes, check the cake by inserting a knife in the middle. If the knife comes out clean, the cake is ready.

Let the cake stand for a few minutes, then take it out of the mold and let it steam out, preferably on a cake cooling rack (still have to buy one of those!).

For the filling:

2 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
6 tbsp flour
1 lt milk
vanilla sugar
100 gr butter
1 kg raspberries (set a bunch aside for decorating)
1 cup water-sugar mixture to wet the cake

Mix eggs, sugar and flour in a steel pan, until the mix becomes homogeneous. Add the milk slowly and stir. Cook stirring continuously, until short after the mixture begins to boil. Turn off the heat, stir in the butter and the vanilla sugar. Let it cool down stirring regularly.

To assemble the cake, set aside less than half of the cream and mix it with the raspberries, crushing the berries slightly. I used frozen and thawed raspberries so they were already slightly mushy. Cut the cake horizontally in two, take the first layer and wet it with water-sugar mixture. Spread the raspberry cream on it and put the second layer. Similarly, wet this layer too and spread the rest of the cream over the cake. What I did is also mix a few raspberries into this cream, it got a very nice pink color but I noticed afterwards that it was too light. And the taste was not really affected. Next time I'd mix the raspberries with all the cream - it's much simpler and the color would be better too.

To decorate the cake, I put a thin pink gelatine layer on top and decorated with sugar pearls. I put some raspberries on top too. In fact I tried to make the gelatine layer with rasberry juice but it just wouldn't get hard, I think raspberries are similar to kiwi's and bananas: they don't get jelly because of some mysterious chemical reason. I should look this up sometime.

We drank a Montbazillac 2003 dessert wine with this cake, as adviced by the wine shop, but I did not find it a very good match: the wine was much sweeter than the cake itself and less fragrant than I expected (there was supposed to be some raspberry aromas but I smelled only citrus). Next time we'll try another wine.




Chocolate Layer Cake
- with orange peel infuse

6 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 3/4 cups flour
2-3 tbsp cacao powder
1 tbsp orange juice
orange peel
vanilla sugar
round cake mold of 26cm diameter

In fact this is the same sponge cake as the above, except for the cacao and extra sugar (needed because of the cacao). Prepare the cake in the same way as above recipe, treat the cacao power similar to flour.

Chocolate filling:

1 egg
3/4 cup sugar
3 tbsp flour
1/2 lt milk
vanilla sugar
3 tbsp cacao powder
50 gr butter
1/2 cup Cointreau

Again, this filling is similar to the one of the raspberry cake but you wouldn't know it when you eat the cake. The preparation is similar, just add the cacao powder at the same time as the flour.

When both the cake and the filling are ready, assemble the cake in two layers. Dilute the Cointreau with same amount of water (or you could use orange juice - I used water). If you want a really wet cake you can even add more, you'll be surprised how good this cake absorbs the liquid. With the amount I give here it is not really wet but slightly moist, the way I like it. Spread all of the filling between the two layers, because the dark bright chocolate icing will come on top!!!

Dark bright chocolate icing

50 gr very dark chocolate (I used Lindt's 99%)
50 gr butter
50 gr milk
1 tbsp powder sugar
2 sheets of gelatine

Let the gelatine soften in some water (room temperature). Heat the milk together with the butter and the sugar. Turn off the fire and add the choclate in small pieces. Stir until the chocolate is dissolved and everything is one homogeneous mass. Take the gelatine out of the water, squeeze the water out and add to the chocolate mixture. Stir until the gelatine is dissolved. Let the icing cool down a few minutes, but not too long because it should still be fluid when we use it. When it is ready, pour over the cake starting from the middle. You can leave it like that or decorate with orange peel.

Hey all people who take taste buds seriously!

We just decided to start this blog to share our super-serious ideas, pictures and stories with all those for whom the word "kitchen" lies just a step away from the word "hedonism" in the cognitive associative network (or whatever other cool names the cognitive psychologists give to that nowadays). So share with us your recipes, dining experiences, ideas and all the secret pleasures that reside in the darkest corners of your mind (mmmmmmm, chocolate cake).

ENJOY! :)