Nigella's Devil's Food Cake

All hail Nigella, she's done it again. I recently bought her latest book Kitchen without having read any reviews, without flicking through it first, and without umm-ing and ahh-ing over it as I usually do with a hefty new cookbook. Should I have been a little more cautious before racing to the counter? A resounding no. It's a triumph and an absolute gem of a book to read, let alone use any of the recipes. There is a beautifully written introduction and a lengthy section on utensils worth having, and perhaps more importantly, gadgets absolutely not worth having. I hold my hands up to making some of the same purchasing errors as her, but it's so tempting at the time!!

Anyway, I couldn't wait to get started and have a go at some of her recipes, and yes I know this is utterly predictable, but I went straight to the desserts chapter and landed satisfyingly on her Devil's Food Cake. If you are on a diet, this is not for you. However if you enjoy a hefty dose of chocolate and cake, then do not hesitate to make this little (or rather large) beauty.

Devil's Food Cake
50g cocoa powder, sifted
100g dark muscovado sugar
250ml boiling water
125g soft unsalted butter
150g caster sugar
225g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarb
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs

Frosting
125ml water
30g dark muscovado sugar
175g unsalted butter, cubed
300g dark chocolate

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line 2 sandwich tins.
Put the cocoa and muscovado sugar into a bowl and add the boiling water, set aside.
Cream the butter and caster sugar until pale and fluffy.
Sift the flour, baking powder and bicarb in another bowl, set aside.
Add the vanilla extract to the butter mixture, still mixing, then the eggs one at a time.
Keep mixing then add the flour mixture, then fold in the cocoa mixture.
Divide between the two tins and bake for about 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

For the frosting put the water, muscovado sugar and butter in a pan and melt over a low heat.
When it begins to bubble take off the heat and add the chopped chocolate, leave for a minute to melt before whisking till smooth and glossy.
Leave for about one hour, giving it a whisk every now and then.
When the cakes have cooled and the frosting is ready, put some frosting between the cakes, then cover with the rest.

Although Nigella suggests an hour is long enough to set the frosting, mine wasn't ready at this point and I needed to speed up the process so I put it in the freezer for 5 minutes. I did the trick, however I sacrificed the glossiness that the frosting should have had for speed. I would suggest making the icing before you make the cake and give it plenty of time to firm up at room temperature.

Utterly delicious and dangerously moreish, I highly recommend this cake. This was demolished within 48 hours, leaving only some rather snug waistbands and a smattering of crumbs on the plate!

Nigella's Chocolate and Nut Brownies

I've been on a hunt recently, a hunt for the best brownie. There are about a billion squillion recipes out there for brownies, and I really wanted to find one worth keeping hold of for those times when nothing else will do but dense, chocolatey, soft, squidgy brownie. You know the moments... when it's cold and gloomy outside and you want a hot mug of tea and something heavy and indulgent, or when you've had a hard day at work and you really deserve a treat, or, you know, when it just tickles your fancy - no excuses necessary!! Anyway, I tried a recipe recently and it was pretty pants if I'm honest. It was a dark and white chocolate swirl brownie and I could just tell as soon as I'd made the batter it was going to be rubbish. Thick and gungy, and kind of oily, just bad bad bad. So, I promised myself, and those who suffered the tantrum when the brownie making didn't go so well, that I'd find a stonking good recipe to make up for it.

I scoured the internet, I trawled through my books, I asked around... and eventually I came across what I really should have gone looking for in the first place: Nigella. You know that I love Nigella, and one of the reasons I love her is because she is oh-so-good at coming up with recipes that are completely indulgent, without feeling bad about it. She knows if you're looking for a brownie recipe, you want it to be rich, heavy, gooey in the middle and choc-tastic. None of this fancy malarkey, she even admits trying to posh up the brownies with pistachios but it doesn't work, and we all know why: brownies aren't posh. They are the opposite of posh. A good brownie should leave your fingers a little sticky, and they should not be eaten in front of someone you want to impress (say, a first date). A brownie should not be eaten delicately, but demolished in warp speed. This is not a mille-feuille or a delicate little tart people, this is the land of over-the-top, completely indulgent, naughty, messy pudds. Oh, and she also knows that if you are making these sqaures of wickedness, you want a lot of them, which is why the recipe makes enough to feed an army...or you know, 3 or 4 greedy people.

Chocolate Brownie:

375g unsalted butter

375g dark chocolate

6 eggs
500g caster sugar

225g plain flour

1 tsp salt
300g chopped walnuts

Melt the chocolate and butter together in a heavy-set pan, stirring regularly to avoid it catching on the bottom.

In a jug, combine the eggs and sugar, and in another separate bowl sieve together the flour and salt.

When the chocolate mixture has melted and cooled slightly, beat in the eggs and sugar, then the flour and nuts. Beat until smooth then pour into a lined tin, about 33 x 23 x 5.5 cm.

Bake at 180 degrees for about 25 minutes, but keep an eye from 20 minutes onward. The top should be pale speckled with dark brown, and will still have a little wobble in the middle. It will be quite soft but have faith in your convictions and get it out of the oven! The difference between soft gooey brownie and dry crumbly brownie is only a minute or two in the oven after all!

Leave to cool as long as you can before slipping the giant slab out of the tin and slicing into hearty wedges!!

You could add any kind of nuts (don't go posh though - Nigella said so!!), dried fruit such as dates or apricots, seeds, whatever really, but I like the basic recipe of dark chocolate and walnuts. The crunch is key here, the brownie should be so soft and squidgy that the walnuts give it a bit of solidity and texture...when you take a bite and find a walnut encased in soft brownie, the combination is utterly divine.

I definitely suggest making the quantity specified here - trust me, you'll never be short of takers. Intensely rich yet frustratingly moreish, these are a winner across the board. No one, and I mean no one, can resist a good old wedge of brownie.

Nigella's Snickerdoodles

Sometimes, because I'm a bit of a loser, I like to browse through my old blog posts. Sometimes to find recipes I want to make again, but more often than not, I have a peruse because I like to see the change in it. I like to see how at the beginning it was quite clear I was just getting to grips with blogging; the writing, the photos, the layout, and over the last year I would like to think that my posting has improved, I love to see the increase in the amount of you that comment and chat, and I'm a little more comfortable in this little space of mine.

However something had been bothering me as I glanced over old blog posts recently, and I couldn't quite figure out what it was. It was nothing that stood out and screamed 'Umm, Becca, Hello?!?! This is wrong!!', nothing conspicuously incorrect or missing, and I just couldn't put my finger on what was. Then it hit me. Nigella. Oh, Nigella, how could I possibly have neglected you so?! As I scrolled through my posts, I realised there was just one lonely little post on a Nigella recipe. One. Now, you may not know this, (chances are you don't since I have carelessly disregarded her books on this blog) but I'm a Nigella devotee, so this is qute an upsetting revelation for me. I have loved Nigella for years, my cookbook collection has ended up including several of her books which I love, and I look forward to her television programmes when we are treated to them. She epitomises home comforts, she shows luxurious food without being ostentacious, and never apologises for her indulgences. And on top of all these home-making efforts, and the importance she clearly places on her family, she has managed to become a successful businesswoman in her own right. Superwoman or what? Anyway, the point of my waxing lyrical about Nigella is this: I haven't written about enough of her recipes here, and I plan to rectify the situation!

So I thought I'd start with something fairly simple but utterly gratifying and enjoyable: Snickerdoodles, or as Mr. Colehill insists on calling them, Snickerdimdums. Don't ask me why, sometimes it's just better to nod along...

These are remarkably simple and quick to make,and the warming smell of cinnamon and nutmeg is completely divine, not to mention the sweet crumbly texture which is truly delightful and very very moreish! Nigella describes them as sort of a baked doughnut, shall we say a 'healthier' version or is that pushing it a little?! Mine were a little crumblier than I expected from the 'doughnut' comparison but perhaps I baked them a minute or so too long. Either way, they weren't exactly snubbed by the hungry mouths around me, and I don't think anyone had a problem with the more biscuit-y texture.

Snickerdoodles

125g unsalted butter

100g caster sugar plus 2 tblsp

1 egg

250g plain flour

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 tsp baking powder

1 tblsp ground cinnamon

Combine the flour, nutmeg, salt and baking powder and set aside.

Next, cream the butter and 100g caster sugar until pale and fluffy, then beat in the egg.

Now beat in the flour until you have a soft and smooth paste/dough.

Combine the rest of the sugar and cinnamon on a plate.

Roll walnut sized pieces of dough in the suagr and cinnamon before placing on a lined baking tray.

Bake in the oven at 180 degrees for about 15 minutes when they should be turning a pale golden brown.

Leave to cool on a wire rack.

I challenge you to stop eating these without either removing yourself from the room or the Snickerdoodles from eyesight!! These biscuits are pretty much perfection in my eyes. They aren't too over the top, just right for an afternoon snack with a cup of tea. Obviously there is room for your Hummingbird type hit-you-over-the-head-with-chocolate Double Chocolate Cookies, but sometimes something a little more refined is in order. And we at Colehill Kitchen are British after all; it's in our nature to get over-excited about a little treat, as Bill Bryson has so aptly pointed out!! So here's to a dainty little morsel of perfection, courtesy of Nigella...I think she would throughly approve of a little indulgence!

A slice of the traditional, a slice of Bakewell!!

Let me begin by saying, I love chocolate. When you need a chocolate fix nothing else will do, no matter how tasty it is. But let’s be honest here, chocolate can get a bit boring after a while and recently I have found myself all chocolate-ed out. So as I’ve been looking through my mountain of cook books for ideas and inspiration I’ve vetoed every chocolate based recipe in search of alternative delicious-ness, and this time I settled on a traditional recipe that have never tried before: Bakewell Slice. I was actually kind of horrified to realise that I’d never made this most British and traditional of tasty treats before, but now I’ve remedied that, and it was definitely worth doing!!

I used a Nigella recipe from her Feast book, partly because I adore Mrs. Lawson and every recipe of hers that I’ve ever used has been a success, (probably due to the copious amounts of naughty ingredients that go in to them, and this recipe is no exception!!) and also because the recipe looked so simple and easy!!

Bakewell Slice

Pastry:
225g butter
60g icing sugar
Pinch salt
225g plain flour

Filling:
150g butter
150g ground almonds
150g caster sugar
4 eggs
325g raspberry jam
100g flaked almonds (Nigella says 60g, but I’m a big fan of these so I whacked the whole packet in the pan to toast!)

The pastry is actually more of a shortbread that you squidge into a tray.
Sieve the flour, icing sugar and salt into a mixing bowl, then add the butter (it helps if it’s cubed) then combine with your fingers until it becomes a crumby mixture, just about coming together. Nigella suggests using a food mixer to do this which is even easier!

Then tip the mix out onto a lined baking tray (mine was about 30cm by 25cm and about 1-2cm deep) and patiently push it into an even layer. Nigella admits to using throwaway tin trays for this recipe so I lined my tray with foil rather than greaseproof paper, which I think made the base extra buttery and sumptuous.

Bless Nigella, she warns that this will take some time and you will feel like you don’t have enough pastry (both true) but stick with it and you will end up with plenty of mix to cover the entire tray.

Bake this in the oven at 180 degrees, until it starts to turn a pale golden colour.
Meanwhile toast the almonds in a pan and then make the frangipane filling.

Melt the butter and set aside, and combine the almonds, flour and eggs in a separate mixing bowl. Then add the melted butter to the almond mix gradually, mixing as you go.

Remove the pastry from the oven and allow it to cool for a few minutes before slathering on plenty of jam!

Pour the frangipane mix over the jam then sprinkle with the toasted almonds before putting back in the oven for about 30-35 minutes until it is golden brown.

As a side note, if you toast the almonds fairly close to when you need to sprinkle them, careful of your fingers!! The oil in the nuts gets very hot, so let them cool a little before diving in!!

Allow the giant slice to cool completely before removing from the tray and slicing into whatever size you fancy!!

I iced about a third because it was requested by a certain high maintenance person (you know who you are!). I prefer it un-iced though, I think the sweetness of the icing overpowers the almond flavour and the jam, and in any case, the golden flakes of almond on the spongy soft pillow of frangipane is a far more aesthetically pleasing than plain white icing!!

Nigella never fails me; I’m so so so pleased with this recipe!!! Pressing the pastry in takes a little extra time and effort, but the end result is a light buttery base filled with a sweet and soft almondy delight, perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon with a nice cup of tea!