Chocolate-cinnamon bundt cake

This morning I wanted to bake something with chocolate, but I wasn't sure of what I could do because the shops are closed. So it had to be something that required cocoa powder, as I don't have any chocolate at home. Fortunately, after going through a few of my 'to-do' recipes I found this one from The Food Librarian. It calls for a Mocha icing, but I used plain sugar instead because the chocolate chips were the bitter chocolate ones, so the resulting cake is not sweet enough (I used A LOT of chocolate chips XD). Anyways, it's really good! very chocolatey and soft, with a nice coffee aftertaste.

It looks tiny because I only made it with HALF of the amounts, as I don't want the cake to go too dry after 2 days standing in the fridge (my parents are advised to not eat much sugar, sooooo...).

Coffee chiffon cake

I've made before lemon chiffon cakes and I finally managed to get it right, so I was confident enough to try another recipe. I was wondering how a coffe flavoured chiffon would be like, and when I saw in other blogs that the coffe chiffon cake's recipe was very similar to the lemon one that I've all ready made, I decided to adapt my recipe as it has demonstrated to be fool-proof. This time I substituted the lemon juice for freshly brewed coffee, the lemon zest for instant coffee powder and the water for milk. Also, I went back to the original 80gr of white sugar, instead of adding honey.

The resulting chiffon cake is not exactly what I was looking for (I wanted a coffee taste kinda like the one of the tiramisu), but it was still very good. Eating a portion of this leaves you the same after taste as drinking a cup of black coffee, though you can't really feel it while you're eating (it's more like a regusto). Probably next time I'll be adding a tablespoon of cocoa powder to "solve" this ;-)

So, my recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:        

100g cake flour
1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 egg yolks
3 egg whites
80g caster sugar
50ml vegetable oil
50ml milk
30ml coffee
2 tablespoons coffee powder

Method:

1. Preheat the oven at 170ºC.
2. Grease the bottom of the mould with butter.
3. Sieve flour, baking powder and salt together, set aside.
4. Separate egg yolks/whites.
5. Place egg yolks in a mixing bowl, add 40g of sugar in 2 separate additions and whisk till the mixture becomes sticky and turns pale (it doesn't really matter if the wisk is manual or electric).
6. Pour in the oil, whisking at the same time till the mixture is well combined. Repeat the same with the milk, followed by the coffee. Add the flour mixture and whisk until flour mixture is fully incorporated into the batter. Add in the instant coffee powder and mix well.
7. In a clean, dry mixing bowl, beat egg whites with an electric mixer until mixture becomes frothy and foamy. Gradually beat in the rest of the sugar and beat on high speed until stiff peaks form.
8. Add the beaten egg white into the egg yolk batter in 3 separate additions, each time folding gently with a spatula until just blended.
9. Pour batter into the mould. Tap the mould lightly on a table top to get rid of any trapped air bubbles in the batter.
10. Bake in the pre-heated oven at 170ºC for 45 minutes (for me this is the exact time and temperature, but it can vary from one oven to another) or until the cake surface turns golden brown, and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
11. Remove from the oven and let cool completely before unmould (if you're using a metal pan then you should invert it inmediatly after taking it from the oven).

Strawberry muffins

The firsts strawberries of the season are here, but they're still small and not very tasty, so eating them with whipped cream is out of the question. Then, what can I do with them? Muffins!!!
I can't remember where I found this recipe, as it has been a long time since then, but it's one of my favorites. I usually add a lot of white chocolate, chopped, but this time I went for the plain strawberry ones because the package I bought was too big and I don't want them to go to waste (nor that I used all of them, I still have to think what to do with the rest of the strawberries). Probably I'll "have to" make a strawberry chiffon, but that's another story.
I didn't have much time, so I put all the mixture in my 6 muffin pan and baked it. As a result, the muffins were enormous and just one is enough for breakfast.They are quite dense but also very tasty ^^

Ingredients:

For the cover:
45g all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons white sugar
2 teaspoons brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
30g butter at room temperature
For the muffins:
2 eggs
105g butter at room temperature
185g white sugar
360g all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
250ml milk
1 & 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
185g strawberries

Method:

1. Preheat the oven at 190ºC.
2. Grease the bottom of the mould with butter.
3. First of all, we make the cover. Mix together all its ingredients in a bowl and set aside.
4. Now the muffins: sieve flour, baking powder and salt together, set aside too.
5. Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
6. Add one egg; mix well. Add the other egg and mix.
7. Add half of the flour and mix again until well blended (be careful to make sure that it has no air bubbles).
8. Pour the milk and the vanilla extract.
9. Then, add the other half of the flour and mix until it's uniform.
10. Now add the strawberries (chopped into small bits).
11. Pour the batter into the mould. Tap the mould lightly on a table top to get rid of any trapped air bubbles in the batter (don't fill all the moulds, only 3/4 of them).
12. Dust the muffins with the cover made in step 3. 
13. Bake in the pre-heated oven at 190ºC for 20-25 minutes (in the middle shelf) or until the muffins surface turns golden brown, and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
14. Remove from the oven and let them cool completely before unmoulding.

Sausage and chorizo rolls: a sunday's yummy dinner

Yesterday I made these rolls for me and my parents. I made 2 sausage and cheese rolls and 2 chorizo rolls, so that we could slice them and eat a bit of everything. With the remaining dough I made four little buns that went right into the freezer to be eaten any other day.

I got the recipe and the kneading intructions from dailydelicious. This blog is my favorite because it has yummy food recipes, beautiful photos and the blogger ilustrates all the steps (and that's the dearest feature for a dummy like me).
This was my fourth attemp at bread making (the previous three were just a disaster), and looks like I finally managed to make it right (thanks again to the step by step ilustrated intructions XD). The rolls were tasty and the bread was well done, not overcooked not undercooked, but I had to bake it for 3 more minutes than the recipe states.

Almond cookies

This week I was in the mood to try again to make almond cookies. It's not like the past attempts went wrong, it's simply that they were not "exactly" what I was looking for.
This time I improvised a mold with some aluminium paper and a rectangular pan, to try to give them a square shape. Well, as it can be seen, they're not perfect squares, but they're just what I wanted them to be (in terms of texture and tastiness). This cookies are a perfect accompaniment for coffee, tea or cocoa, because their flavour goes great with them. They're a bit too big because I wanted to put halved almonds in their tops as a mean of "decoration", but I think they'll taste even better if they're made bite-sized.

Ingredients: (makes 20-22 square cookies)

125g butter
70g caster sugar
130g all purpose flour
125g ground almonds
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Method:

1. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
2. Add the egg and the vanilla to the mixture.
3. In another bowl, sieve together the flour and the ground almons.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and mix to form a soft dough.
5. Shape the dough into small balls and place them in the baking sheet (they'll lose their round shape when baked because of the butter).
6. Bake at 180ºC for 25 minutes (or until they turn golden).
7. Remove from the oven and let them cool.

Happy Valentine's Day

As today is Valentine's Day I thougth to do something special for my boyfriend. Of course it had to be red, so I decided to make the 5 layer Valentine Jello that I saw some time ago in The Food Librarian's blog. This sweet is the easiest one I've made so far, and it's just perfect for my love as it's red & white, which are his (ours) team's colors, Athletic Bilbao!!!

My jello is made of strawberry jello + condensed milk jello. I didn't use any other flavours because the strawberry flavour is the only red colored one available here. Also, I'd have liked to make it heart-shaped, but I decided on this last friday and didn't had enough time to look for an appropiate cookie cutter so...well, you can see the final result.

Domokun cake

Last week my boyfriend and I celebrated our 3rd aniversary together, so I decided to bake a Domokun shaped cake as a present for him (he's such an otaku...XD). Well, here's the final result.

The cake itself was 2 layers of chocolate sponge cake filled with whipped cream and covered with chocolate ganache. I forgot to buy chocolate coated peanuts (conguitos), so I choped hurriedly some leftover chocolate to give it a round shape. I made the mouth with white chocolate and strawberry jam.

Ingredients:

250g cake flour

200g caster sugar

225g butter

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 big eggs

2 tablespoons warm water
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanila extract

Method:

1. Preheat the oven at 180ºC and grease and flour a baking tray with butter.
2. Mix together the softened butter and the sugar until fluffy.
3. Add the eggs one at time until well mixed. Add the warm water and the vanila.
4. In another bowl sieve together the flour, salt, cocoa and baking powder.
5. Add half of the flour mixture to the rest of the ingredients. Mix until well combined and then add the other half.
6. Pour the batter into the baking tray and bake for 10 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

As I used sweet cocoa powder I filled the cake with pure whipped cream and made the chocolate ganache with bitter chocolate. For the ganache I followed this recipe, only that was careful to not use any metal spoons or bowls to make it as they'd have given a metallic taste to the chocolate.

My boyfriend loved the cake, he said it was delicious! ^^ (not that he had any other option XD).