OK so me and my oven have been off the grid for a while now... Mainly because what I can only describe as a higher force is having none of it. I'm jinxed I'm telling you.
Firstly, a new recipe I tried for a complicated Dark Chocolate cake (white mint chocolate icing) which
took 3 hours to bake and an hour to prepare, flew, yes flew from my hands out of the window and narrowly missed my neighbours glass table (see figure). OK, unlucky. I was pretty hacked off I can tell you, and more than a few expletives were voiced at the squirrels happily scoffing the delicious damage. But fine these things happen.
Then I bake Malin from work a lovely birthday cake, chocolate again, decorated it, infuse it with the necessary love. Dandy. Silver balls and a few chocolate lattice is what this needs I think to myself, so I open the cupboard and a whole bag of sugar drops onto Malin's cake. Again, the required expletives voiced. I scrape it back together and hope that no one notices past the glittery candles.
And since these events its just been the odd thing, you know? Forgetting the baking soda, mixing up the plain flour with the self raising, trying to work out why the cake just wont bloody cook. It gets you down. You start thinking well, maybe you've lost your bakery mojo, maybe thats it...
All I need is one stonker of a cake to get me back in the zone. Just one good cake...
You can do it! I believe in you and your baking mojo.
Perhaps you could ease yourself in with this failsafe Rocky Road recipe? (courtesy of the hourglass Nigella, god love her treacle fingers).
Ingredients
125g/4½oz soft unsalted butter
300g/10½oz best-quality dark chocolate, broken into pieces
3 tbsp golden syrup
200g/7¼oz rich tea biscuits
100g/3½oz mini marshmallows
2 tsp icing sugar, to dust
Method
1. Heat the butter, chocolate and golden syrup in a heavy-based saucepan over a gentle heat. Remove from the heat, scoop out about 125ml/4½fl oz of the melted mixture and set aside in a bowl.
2. Place the biscuits into a plastic freezer bag and crush them with a rolling pin until some have turned to crumbs but there are still pieces of biscuit remaining.
3. Fold the biscuit pieces and crumbs into the melted chocolate mixture in the saucepan, then add the marshmallows.
4. Tip the mixture into a 24cm/9in square baking tin and smooth the top with a wet spatula.
5. Pour over the reserved 125ml/4½fl oz of the melted chocolate mixture and smooth the top with a wet spatula.
5. Refrigerate for about two hours or overnight.
6. To serve, cut into 24 fingers and dust with icing sugar.
Posted by: KitKat | 05 August 2008 at 09:41 AM