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Archive for the ‘Desserts’ Category

I like eating desserts but I usually don’t particularly enjoy making them. However, this is a quick and easy cake to make and it tastes great. The original recipe suggests serving with a strawberry coulis but the cake is fine just as it is if strawberries are not in season when you make it.

Flourless Chocolate Dessert Cake

Ingredients:

100g dark eating chocolate, chopped
100g butter, chopped
2 tablespoons marsala
1/2 cup (110g) caster sugar
2/3 cup (80g) almond meal
1 tablespoon instant coffee powder
1 tablespoon hot water
3 eggs, separated
icing sugar mixture

Method:

1. Preheat oven to moderate. Grease deep 20cm-round cake pan; line base and side with baking paper.
2. Combine chocolate and butter in small saucepan; stir over low heat until both are melted.
3. Combine chocolate mixture with marsala, sugar, almond meal and combine coffee and the water in large bowl; beat in egg yolks one at a time.
4. Beat egg whites in small bowl with electric mixer until soft peaks form; gently fold into chocolate mixture in two batches. Pour mixture into prepared pan.
5. Bake in moderate oven about 45 minutes; cover with foil during baking if overbrowning. Cool cake in pan, cover; refrigerate several hours or overnight.
6. Carefully turn cake onto board; cut into slices with a hot knife. Dust cake with icing sugar.

Serve with strawberry coulis and whipped cream if desired.

Strawberry Coulis

Ingredients:

250g strawberries
1/4 cup (40g) icing sugar mixture

Method:

1. Blend or process hulled strawberries and icing sugar until mixture is smooth.

Tips

The cake will sink slightly as it cools.

Marsala is a sweet red wine. If you don’t have any handy, you can try substituting port or even sherry.

If you are after a gluten-free recipe, check that the icing sugar you use doesn’t contain flour.

This is a very easy dessert to make as it has 4 of everything. You can make it in a steamer which is the traditional method but it turns out just as nicely done in a greased baking dish.

Easy Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients:

4  arrowroot biscuits
4  cups milk
4  eggs
4  tblsps cocoa
4  tblsps sugar

Method:

1. Preheat moderate oven
2. Crush biscuits. An easy way to do this is to put them in a plastic bag and roll them with a rolling pin. Then just empty the bag into the mixing bowl.
3. Mix crushed biscuits, cocoa and sugar in bowl.
4. Warm the milk gently in a saucepan.
5. Beat eggs.
6. Add milk and beaten eggs to the dry ingredients and stir well.
7. Put in a greased ovenproof dish and bake in a moderate oven for around 1 hour. Test it towards the end of the cooking time to see whether it is done. It is ready if a metal skewar (or knife) comes out clean and the mixture is set.
8. Alternatively you can put the mixture in a steamer and steam in the oven for an hour.
9. Serve with a little cream and stewed apricots.

Tips

I have found that sometimes you end up with a fair amount of liquid in the pudding. This can be caused by having the oven too hot but I think it is more likely caused by not enough arrowroot. This recipe is over 50 years old and arrowroot biscuits back then had more than the 0.1% arrowroot they have today. What I usually do when I make this dessert is to add a couple of teaspoons of arrowroot powder to the dry ingredients and that usually solves the too much liquid problem.

If you find that the pudding is browning too quickly on the top, cover the dish with a lid if it has one, otherwise just use aluminium foil to cover it.