P365 - Day 289 - flourless chocolate and orange cake

I was going to make a cake on Thursday, but I couldn’t be bothered. I had so much more stuff to do!

Today was wet, raining and cold, so it was the perfect opportunity.

I made this cake last year (yes, I only make one cake a year), and it was divine, so I thought I might as well try it again.

The oranges - before and after

Melting dark chocolate and butter

You need 8 eggs!

Beating the eggs & caster sugar

A lot of almond meal

Beating in the almond meal, oranges and chocolate

Into the pan

The baking time is meant to be about one hour and 25 minutes. I lost track of time after about two and a half hours. I remember it took a similarly long time last time I did it. 

But it's worth the wait.

I realise that this post isn't going to be complete without a picture of the finished product, but as with most things I cook, it is not a particularly beautiful cake to look at. 

So there might be an update later in the night when the cake's cut. Or there might not. If you want to see what it's supposed to look like, go and look at the recipe - that one looks pretty much perfect.

P365 Day 107 - hot chocolate

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago how Juniordwarf has started to do a lot of things now that he wasn’t doing before.

He’s been helping me cook his Sunday night cheesy noodles for quite a while now, and he’s getting really good at pouring the milk into the pot to make the cheese sauce a little bit at a time. We also cook ANZACs every Tuesday for him to have at recess at school. He pretty much knows the recipe off by heart now and knows what goes in where and when. His version of rolling the dough into balls is (1) eating as much as he can get away with and (2) mushing handfuls of it together and throwing it down onto the biscuit tray.

Fairly typical four-year-old cooking, I think.

A few weeks ago he wanted hot chocolate for afternoon tea. I’m not sure why. I can’t remember if it’s because I was going to have some, or because he’d had some at the coffee shop and wanted more, or if he’d seen the tin and wanted to know what it was.

Whatever the reason, he wanted it and it’s now become one of his favourite drinks. And of course, he has to help make it

The first couple of times we made it the only hot chocolate we had was a tiny of extremely delightful chilli hot chocolate that my sister-in-law first introduced me to and which I get as a very occasional treat for myself. (Don’t knock it until you try it, it has this divine chocolate taste, followed by a slight chilli aftertaste.)

I was worried that it might be too hot for Juniordwarf, but he seemed to like it (damn!). I didn’t buy any more, so we were without hot chocolate the next Tuesday. The local supermarket doesn’t stock anything like it, so I had to buy a plain one. Juniordwarf was very concerned that it wasn’t the hot one, but I told him I’d get some more (on a day to be determined), which hasn’t happened yet).

So every time he wants hot chocolate he observes that we still don’t have the other one, but he’s more than happy to have this one, and to help make it. For him, this involves getting the milk out of the fridge, taking the lid off the hot chocolate, dipping his finger in and eating the chocolate powder. Oh, and stirring the milk as it heats on the stove and tipping (most of) the chocolate in the spoon into the pot. (The rest goes all over the stove top . . . )

As I said, typical four-year-old cooking!

These are his cheesy grin photos. It was one of those days where he had to ham it up for every photo.

P365 Day 89 - peppermint slice

This is one of my favourite things . . . a peppermint slice from the Salamanca Bakehouse in Hobart.

When I was studying at uni, I used to love the peppermint slices from the Ref. They were huge square things with a hard biscuit type base, a lot of peppermint icing and a thin crunchy chocolate top. I think they cost about 90 cents, which probably shows how long ago my uni days were.

The delightful little treat pictured above is a lot smaller than the chunks they used to sell at the Ref. It will set you back $2.90, but it's a completely different experience to what I'd been used to. It's the 'gourmet' version, and now I've had it I can't go back to the other ones.

It has a more cakey, soft base, a generous dollop of peppermint icing and a chewy, gooey, almost fudgy, soft thick chocolate topping. It's a very rich slice, and the serving size is - well you wouldn't want it to be any bigger.

I don't have them very often, but when I do it's a real treat.

Just what I needed today after a morning of staring at spreadsheets.