Well..I don’t know what made me start this marathon chocolate bake. It began with my new chocolate moulds and transfer sheets arriving, then my baking brain went into overdrive.
I started by mixing and matching ingredients to have a go at making some flavoured chocolates. I chose two fillings, the first being a real ale truffle from Paul A. Young’s book on How to Make Chocolates. The second, a strawberry marshmallow fondant filling using a strawberry flavouring from Lakeland.
Forgetting I had only ever watched someone demonstrate how to temper chocolate I set about practicing this technique. The chocolate got everywhere,( white kitchen units turned chocolate coloured very quickly), but the smell in the kitchen was wonderful. Hubby kept popping in to ask if there was any left overs and I hadn’t got anywhere near to completing anything yet. ( Needless to say there’s never any wastage with chocolate).
Anyway once I was happy with my technique I set about creating the chocolates. Four hours later I had created a selection of 22 chocolates. Hopefully with practice I will be able to make more in a shorter time span.
Now I needed to think about a cake. Obviously it had to incorporate chocolate and….. if I put in some vegetables I could fool myself into thinking it might be healthy ha ha. I opted to use courgette. Please don’t be put off at this stage ( even if you dislike courgettes) the courgettes actually produce a lovely moist cake and you can’t see or taste them in the finished cake.
Serves 8-10
Ingredients
350g SR Flour
375g caster sugar
50g cocoa powder
1tsp mixed spice (optional)
3 eggs
175 mls extra virgin olive oil
500mls courgette, grated ( approximately 2 medium sized courgettes)
NB. Courgettes can be very watery so I would advise after grating put the courgette into a clean tea towel and squeeze out the excess water before using in your mixture.
Filling and icing
150g butter
250g icing sugar
50g Cocoa powder
Decoration
Chocolate transfer
Chocolate
Method
Heat oven to 160C /Gas 4
Line a 24cm tin with grease proof paper
Put flour,cocoa powder and spice into a bowl
Put eggs,sugar, courgette and I’ll in another bowl and combine together
Add courgette mixture to flour and stir to combine
Pour mixture into cake tin
Put in oven and bake for approximately 50 minutes
Cool cake
Cut cake in half and spread some of the butter icing onto one half. Cover with other half of cake.
Put cake onto plate or turn table and cover sides and top with a smooth coating of butter cream
Coat the chocolate transfer sheet with chocolate,let the chocolate partially set. Trim and apply to the sides of the cake. Put in fridge to set.
Use remainder of butter icing to decorate edge of top layer of cake and around the base.
Decorate with homemade chocolates.
THEN
Sit down admire the finished product,put your feet up and enjoy
babsbestbites 