Simplest Chocolate Loaf

So, this has been a crappy week. 

On Monday I quit my awful job and the week went downhill from there. Sad and frustrating and all a bit grim. By the weekend the world seemed like a particularly ugly place. And how did I deal with these feelings? I made a cake. And I felt a lot better. Thank goodness for the immediate remedy of throwing some stuff in the oven and ending up with something fragrant and delicious to shove my face into. It can really help.

Until recently, if pressed on the subject, I'd have to admit that my least favourite flavour of cake would be chocolate. I wonder in what situation would I ever be pressed on that particular subject? But, the point is, my taste buds have changed. Why? Dunno. Maybe it was that cake. But the point is that chocolate cake is my new thing. Proper brownies are next, obviously. Unfortunately I'm quite time-poor at the moment so this fabulously simple one-bowl cake is a great one for the repertory. It only uses cocoa powder, no actual chocolate, but is still very rich and brownie-like in texture. 

I'm becoming the kind of person who needs to have cake in the house at all times. I get a little twitchy if there isn't some form of soft, sweet food hanging around. This explains my ever increasing waistline. And thighs. And bottom. So, I guess it's the perfect time to discover this cake because it's a piece of cake (har har) to whip up and, if you exercise self restraint (har har) it will last a couple of days. Or, more realistically, a couple of hours.

Simplest Chocolate Loaf 

(adapted, very liberally, from smittenkitchen who adapted it from Magnolia Bakery At Home)

200g butter, at room temp
300g light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
200ml milk
175g self raising flour
100g cocoa powder (I used Green & Blacks Organic)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 170 degrees/160 for fan ovens. Line a 9 inch loaf pan, then butter and flour it for safety.

Whip the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy - if you use an electric mixer you'll avoid arm cramps, but a balloon whisk and 5 mins solid elbow grease will do the trick. Mix in the egg and vanilla extract. Add milk and mix well. It will go a bit lumpy and weird, but don't worry. Sift in flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. Mix in gently. There may be a few lumps but don't over mix! You'll end up with a thick, shiny batter. Tip it into your loaf tin and bake for 60 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Cool in the tin for 15-20 mins, then tip out onto a rack to cool fully.

Thank you, Gods of Cake. You helped.

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Lemon & Black Pepper Shrimp Spaghetti

This won't win any awards in the 'diet' category. Butter is a major part of this dish.

A tip. Don't skimp on the butter. Obviously, this is not a dish for every day, so go for it. You won't regret it. The generous amount of butter takes this dish from good to great.

As an experiment I used half white and half wholewheat spaghetti for this, just because I had both types open in the cupboard. Gotta say, it really works. The two textures compliment each other well. And it's pretty too.

Lemon & Black Pepper Shrimp Spaghetti

For 2:

150g wholewheat spaghetti

150g white spaghetti

250g prawns (raw is best, but you can use cooked, just reduce cooking time to 1 min)

4 cloves garlic, finely minced

1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes

1 tsp ground black pepper

Pinch of salt

Juice of half a lemon

100ml white wine

50g butter 

Handful of parsley, roughly chopped

Olive oil

Start your spaghetti cooking in well salted water. Keep an eye on it. The sauce should take about as long as the pasta takes to cook.

Heat 2 tbsp olive oil over a medium high flame. Add minced garlic and cook for 30 seconds - don't let it burn and get bitter. Add wine, lemon juice, pepper, salt and chilli flakes and cook down for 4-5 mins until reduced to 1/3. Add prawns and butter and cook for 2-3 mins, until prawns are pink and the sauce is silky. By now the spaghetti should be done. Drain it and throw it in to the sauce with the parsley. Stir until coated with the sauce and serve with some more parsley, black pepper and a glug of olive oil.

A delicious discovery on a crappy day.

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Healthy Fried Chicken & Warm Green Bean Salad

After that cake I'm on a bit of a health kick. Which is dull, frankly. And sometimes, the only thing I want in the whole world is a plate of fried chicken. Well, screw it, I decided. I want to have my chicken and eat it too. This quick method is a healthy(er) version that dials down the calories but not the flavour. It feels naughty but really isn't very. And the salad is fresh and flavourful, with warm tomatoes that burst in your mouth. An almost carb-free meal that satisfies even the greediest (me) dieter. 

 

But first let's take a moment to appreciate some of my favorite ingredients, nicely lined up on my board. Ahh. Lovely. 

Healthy Fried Chicken with Warm Green Bean Salad.

For 2 reluctant dieters:

2 lean skinless chicken breasts, sliced into strips
1-2 tbsp self raising flour
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (if you want a bit of a kick)
Good pinch of salt
Good pinch of pepper
Olive oil
Package of green beans, ends trimmed
Two handfuls of cherry tomatoes
Handful of black olives, chopped
Handful basil leaves

Dressing: 3 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp white wine vinegar, 1 tsp your favourite mustard, 1 clove of minced garlic, good pinch of salt and pepper - in a jar and shake well.

Put the chicken strips into a bowl with flour, paprika, cayenne, salt and pepper. Toss to coat each piece fully. Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a large frying pan. Use tongs to carefully lower each piece of chicken into the pan. Cook on medium high heat, turning the pieces over carefully (it can spatter) until golden brown. Place strips on a kitchen towel to remove excess oil.

Meanwhile, heat an inch of water in another wide pan or wok. Throw in the beans and cook for three minutes or until sightly tender but still crunchy. Drain the water and put the beans back into the pan with 1 tbsp olive oil. Add the tomatoes, olives, basil and a good pinch of salt and pepper. Toss over a high heat for 1-2 minutes - just enough to begin to heat the tomatoes (they should still be whole, not mush.)

Serve with just a drizzle of dressing and chicken strips piled on top.

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Chocolate Guinness Cake with Whisky Cream Icing

Stop whatever you're doing, and go and make this cake. Now.

Why are you not doing it?

Seriously, do it now. I promise, you will not regret it.

I made this last week for my beloveds birthday and it went down a storm. It is seriously chocolaty, seriously boozy, and seriously impossible not to have a second slice. It's adapted from an adaptation with a few additions of my own - mainly more booze - and some tweaks to the measurements. The addition of the Whiskey was all my own idea...(don't judge me)

(...for those of you thinking 'Yuck. Guinness? In a perfectly good chocolate cake? Seriously, Effie?' well, I promise, you will love it. Most of the Guinness-y taste cooks away and just leaves a slight tang that intensifies the taste of the chocolate and makes the cake beautifully moist but still very light. This is the mack daddy of chocolate cakes. And if the alcohol-y topping is too much for you, just leave out the whiskey and stick with a classic cream cheese frosting.)

Chocolate Guinness Cake with Whiskey Cream Icing

Adapted from Gizzi Erskine's recipe, who adapted it from Nigella's.

250ml Guinness

250g unsalted butter, cut into chunks 

120g plain chocolate (70% or more is best) broken into pieces (plus extra for shaving on top - optional)

40g cocoa powder

400g caster sugar

100ml greek yoghurt

2 eggs 

1 tbsp vanilla

300g self raising flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

For the icing:

300g cream cheese (I used Philadelphia)

150g icing sugar

150ml whipping cream (or double)

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 shots whiskey

Grease and line two 9 inch baking tins. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees (160 for silly fan ovens like mine) 

Put the Guinness and butter in a large saucepan over a medium/low heat and stir. When butter has melted into the booze, whisk in chocolate, cocoa and sugar. When combined, take the pan off the heat. In a small bowl, beat together the yoghurt, eggs and vanilla, then whisk into the beer mixture. Whisk in flour and bicarbonate of soda.

Pour the batter into your two pans. Don't worry - it will be very runny and might even fizz a little! Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted in the middle. Leave to cool completely in the tin because it's a very moist cake and will break easily. 

Frosting: With a whisk, beat the cream cheese until smooth. Add sifted icing sugar and whisk to combine. In another bowl, whip the cream and vanilla extract until thick and fluffy. Add to the cream cheese mixture with the shots of whiskey and combine until smooth. 

Put about a quarter of the icing in a blob the middle of your bottom layer of cake. Sandwich the cakes together, making sure the icing doesn't come squidging out the sides - you want the sides of the cake to be completely brown. Slather the rest of the icing all over the top of your cake. The cake is so dark and the icing so white, it looks like... you guessed it, a pint of Guinness. 

We served the cake with little shots of Guinness and followed up with a shot of Whiskey. It was a boozy, happy night. Just great.

Another great thing about this cake? It gets better with age. It was delicious on the day of baking, but a day later it had become even fudgier and rich. Store in an airtight container in cool, dry place. Be prepared to hear it calling to you in the middle of the night. Be prepared to get out of bed, creep through the house, open the fridge and sneak a tiny slice, standing in the kitchen in your pyjamas. I'm just warning you.

(Damn, I need to invest in some spring form pans. Getting these babies out of their tins was a saga...)

Because it was a birthday party, I covered it with curls of plain chocolate for a bit of celebratory decoration, but really it doesn't need it. 

(Brilliantly, because my cake tins are quite shallow, I had enough batter left for 3 cupcakes. Waste not, want not...)

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Seafood Paella

It's been a month of firsts. It was my beloved's birthday, and he requested this dish. Well, maybe not requested. I gave him a list of options and paella was the only one he seemed vaguely intrigued by. I'd never tried cooking one before, but I was feeling bolstered from the risotto success a few weeks ago and thought another slow cooked rice dish shouldn't be too much of a challenge. I scoured online for a method to follow, but ended up cobbling together a recipe of my own creation taking inspiration from several sources, a few phone calls and a little common sense. Apologies if the photos are a little sketchy but you get the idea...

Saffron. My new favourite spice. I'd never cooked with it before and was a little trepidatious. Firstly, it's quite expensive, and I was worried I'd muck it up somehow. It comes in a tiny little package and has instructions about 'blooming' which sounds more complicated than it actually is. Secondly, I didn't really know what it tasted like or how much to use. How much is a 'pinch' anyway?

Well. Saffron is a very beautiful spice to cook with. The 'blooming' process gave me a feeling of something sacred and hallowed happening in my kitchen.

Apparently it's important to 'bloom' your saffron to maximise the colour you get from it. I felt a bit intimidated by the word but blooming is easy. Just add your saffron (I used a large 'pinch' for my paella for 6) to half a cup of warm (but not boiling) water and leave for 10 minutes. Add this to your stock and you're ready to go. Here's my saffron, mid-bloom.

Really beautiful. I wish I had a better camera so I could show you how gorgeous this process is. The orange colour gently leaks out of the strands, swirling down into the water and you end up with a luminous yellow brine.

Seafood Paella for 6-8 people:

2.5 cups (500g) paella rice
200g raw king prawns
300g raw mixed seafood (squid, prawns, mussels, whatever)
8 cups stock (I used half fish stock, half vegetable) - warm or room temp, not cold
Good pinch of saffron, bloomed in 1/2 cup of water
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 red pepper, in chunks
1 green pepper, in chunks
Handful cherry tomatos, halved
2 good handfuls of green beans, sliced into inch-long pieces
6 inches of good chorizo sausage, sliced
2 spring onions
Pinch of chilli flakes
Large bunch of flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
1 lemon, sliced into wedges

Bloom your saffron (instructions above) and add it to your stock.

Fry onion and garlic gently until the onion is translucent and soft. Add red and green pepper and beans and cook for a minute or two. Add the rice and stir until every grain is coated with oil. Cook the rice for 3 minutes in the oil. The grains may start to go pale, depending on the rice you are using.

Add the stock and leave to simmer over a medium heat for about 20 minutes - check the instructions on your rice for exact timing. Because I prefer my rice to have a bit of bite, I only put in 3/4 of my stock. I didn't want a sloppy paella. (I'm glad I did this because it was just perfect - the rice was soft but still had some bite - any more stock and it would have been too wet. I guess what I'm saying is, you have to use your instincts on a dish like this. Err on the side of safety if unsure.)

Important! Don't stir too much. The more you stir, the creamier it will get and will head towards risotto territory. Just stir occasionally to make sure it's not catching on the bottom.

While the rice is cooking... In another pan, quickly saute your seafood in 1 tbsp of olive oil and a pinch of chilli flakes and a pinch of salt. 1-2 minutes over a medium high heat will do it. Don't overcook - you'll end up with chewy, fishy rubber. Not good. Put seafood and their juices to one side in bowl. In the same pan, quickly saute your chorizo and spring onions for 1-2 minutes.

When the rice is cooked, taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper if needed. Stir in the seafood and chorizo and their juices, cherry tomatoes and half the parsley. You can serve immediately or put it in a large dish with a lid in a medium/low oven until ready to take to the table. Serve with the rest of the parsley scattered on top and lemon wedges stuck into the rice.

 

  

Honesty = the best policy. Because I had two vegetarians to dinner (who eat seafood? Seems odd, but hey...) I left the chorizo on a side plate, and those who wanted could add it at the table. Those veggies are missing out. The chorizo really brought it to life. So there.

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