Fluffy Brownie with Raspberry Puree & a Touch of Summer

This is what happens when you post a delicious recipe late: you simply forget how you made it!! :/
My best posts are always published when the food is still hot, resting in the oven so-to-speak, so that should teach me a lesson :))
I have been waiting for summer ever since it ended last year! The unmatched beauty and bounty of the farmers' market, the long days basking in the sun make this time of the year truly special. 
A week ago I bought fresh raspberries and with all the frozen egg whites I had left from all the times I made lemon curd, I baked a scrumptious fluffy and  as light as a feather brownie. 
So, here we go:


Dark chocolate- check.

Fresh raspberries-check.

A cupful of leftover frozen egg whites- check.

Flour- check.


Baking powder- check.

Vanilla extract- check. 

Brownie with raspberry puree, egg whites and vanilla extract. 

Pretty, simple,  and pretty simple really. :)) If you have ever made a classic pound cake (minus the egg yolks) this brownie will be the easiest thing in the world.

Method

Puree a cupful of fresh raspberries, sweeten and set aside.  Melt a bar of good quality dark chocolate and mix it with approx 50 grams of butter. 

Thaw the egg whites (approx 6) and beat them with sugar and vanilla extract till they harden. Pour the raspberry puree and melted chocolate, whisk, and finally add the baking powder and flour (no more than 4 tbs). 

Bake for approx 40 minutes @ 150 degrees Celsius and decorate with mint leaves and extra raspberries which haven't squashed in the process. 

so cute, right? :)

In my humble opinion as an amateur chef  :), this is the ideal summer dessert: it's packed with fruit, velvety and chocolaty, light and guilt-free in the absence of egg yolks. 

 Yes, yes, yes,  it was love at first...bite! :) 

perfect for breakfast while browsing Ideal Homes magazine, and dreaming of all beautiful things

The Most Delicious Brownie in the World

Some time ago I made The Best Banana Bread in the World :) No bragging, this is indeed the best banana bread in the world and let me tell you what were the criteria to label this delicious cake as "the best":

* it's healthy

* it's mildly sweet; it contains one spoon of honey and the natural sweetness of ripe bananas

* it's spicy :)

* it's vegan (no eggs, no milk)

* it's fat free (no oil, no butter) - yes, it's possible to bake an awesome banana bread without the obiquitous cup of oil

There is no secret that I love relatively guilt-free desserts and I have a pet hate for oil and animal fats. 

I adore brownies. They are so moist & smooth as a result of the packet of butter at the core of their velvety texture. Fair enough. I once made a brownie following the text book, and I must say it was divine. But is there a brownie to appeal to my taste which doesn't compromise on the flavour, the moisture and the deep chocolaty taste?

So I looked, I browsed, I searched, I scrolled down until "butter" cropped up in the recipe and then I gave up. 

But it just occurred to me to add melted bitter chocolate and ganache to The Best Banana Bread in the World and there I had The Most Delicious Brownie in the World, inspired by Rachel De Thampe who wrote a wonderful book called Less Meat, More Veg. I hope you will try this version and enjoy it in the morning with a cup of strong coffee with cardamon. 

so delicious and soft it melts into your mouth

brownie crumbles

Totally Decadent Raspberry Chocolate Cake with Milk Tapioca Pudding

I love baking, I love chocolate, and I love raspberries. What a great combination when you mix them together and they end up as a luxurious weekend dessert.  The idea came to me yesterday in the Whittard of Chelsea shop when I noticed, fell in love with (and snapped it off the shelf) their delicious 70% Cocoa & Raspberry Hot Chocolate. 

I dreamt about it all night and this morning my heart was set on it, as I had imagined it: a delicious chocolate sponge with chocolate frosting and hints of raspberry. 

Decadent Raspberry Chocolate Cake 

The base - classic egg & vanilla sponge with 85% dark melted chocolate and Whittard of Chelsea raspberry cocoa.

5 medium sized eggs

4 tbs of sugar

essence of vanilla

5 tbs flour

1.5 sachet of baking power

1/2 sachet of baking soda

1 bar of good quality dark chocolate (85%)

1 slice of butter 

4 tbs of raspberry cocoa

50 ml full-fat milk

Method

Preheat the oven at 120 degrees 

1. In a bowl mix 2 tbs of sugar with the yolks and beat them hard till the sugar breaks. Add the vanilla and mix. 

2. In a separate bowl mix the egg whites with sugar and beat. 

3. Melt the chocolate with the butter (approx 25 gr)- when it comes to butter, I am never too generous :) 

4. Pour the melted chocolate over the egg yolks and mix. Work in the raspberry cocoa and add the milk, if it becomes too thick.

5. Pour the chocolate cream over the beaten egg whites and mix lightly. 

6. In a separate bowl mix 5 tbs of flour, the baking powder and the baking soda and mix to allow them to blend. Drizzle over the chocolate cream (5) and mix with a silicone spoon. 

7. Grease and flour a tin with a detachable ring. Bake for around 35 minutes at 120 degrees Celsius.

Chocolate frosting

half a bar of 85% dark chocolate

1 small bar of milk & white chocolate (from Ritter)

a (thin) slice of butter

50 ml of full-fat milk

2 tbs of raspberry cocoa

Method

Melt the chocolate and the butter and add the raspberry cocoa and the milk.  Drizzle the hot chocolate over the cake, by this time, it should have baked and cooled down.

I love the chocolate ripples.

 Milk Tapioca Pudding with Green Tea

half a glass of powder milk

2 glasses of warm full-fat milk

3 tbs of tapioca flour

1 sachet of gelatine

2 tbs of condensed milk

1 tsp spiced loose green tea (from Whittard of Chelsea)

Method

1. Dissolve the powder milk in the warm milk. Work in the tapioca flour and add more milk. Cook on a low heat until it starts to bubble. 

2. Dissolve the gelatine in cold milk, heat & steam. 

3. Mix the gelatine with the tapioca pudding (step 1 and 2), add the condensed milk. Transfer to small cups and decorate with spiced tea. 

I truly loved this cake. It reminded me of the voluptuous original Sacher Torte that you can only have in Vienna... Yes, it was really good. I think I have finally sorted out my baking problems: I've discovered & have learnt more about the six settings of my oven and, by trial and error (!!!), I found out the right balance between baking time and ideal moisture.

When you are new to baking :) (like me), you must always keep your chin up- make mistakes, dump the cake, start a new one until you get it right. This week I made an average lemon cake with orange blossom water and a disaster of an apple tart with lavender. Bad combination. I should have known better, but I am a curious person in the kitchen and - at the end of the day -some great cakes came to life purely by mistake. Maybe the next one will be mine :) xx

Hot Chocolate, Sweet Bread & Some Soul Searching

No, I will not write down the recipe of how to make hot chocolate! :)


I know I will sound a bit mushy, but even a cuppa chocolate can bring you down memory lane. 


You may remember the famous madeleine quotation by Marcel Proust from A la recherche du temps perdu:  "I raised to my lips a spoonful of the cake . . . a shudder ran through my whole body and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place." [...]


"And suddenly the memory revealed itself."


"The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it...." but "....as soon as I had recognized the taste of the piece of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me .... immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion opening on to the garden which had been built out behind it for my parents."


It's funny how many times a whiff of perfume perforating the air, the flavour of a dish or a tantalizing sip we take send us to a different world we once were in and thus, makes our return simply magical.


Same as in Proust's story, my mother had given me this big sweet bread named cozonac in Romanian. It's made with white flour, yeast, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, saffron, lemon or orange rind and zest, and stuffed with chocolate, walnuts, Turkish Delight or raisins soaked in rum overnight.


I have never attempted such a difficult task, but I enjoy having a slice a day, relishing every bite and going back to the hot kitchen, seeing my mother kneading the sweet aromatic dough and there I am, stealing a tiny, gluey tidbit... How many times hasn't my mother found me with the finger in the pie, literally speaking? Guilty pleasures are made of these short instances that shape our life as adults: the love we were loved with, the tenderness with which we were often reprimanded.

Sweet bread with raisins, Turkish Delight and stuffed with rich, dark chocolate. Vintage serving tray.

Coming out of the stream of consciousness, I must say I crushed some fresh leaves of mint in the mortar and pestle till they oozed their green sap, mixed them with Dutch dark cocoa, brown sugar and scalding hot milk. 


A surprising combination: something old (the sweet bread) and something new (the hot chocolate), something hot (the milk) and something fresh (the mint).


What a trip!


And I will end with the excerpt from Du côté de chez Swann in French because, as Shakspeare rightly acknowledged, "translators [are] traitors", aren't they?


"(Ma mère) envoya chercher un de ces gâteaux courts et dodus appelés Petites Madeleines qui semblent avoir été moulés dans la valve rainurée d'une coquille de Saint-Jacques. Et bientôt, machinalement, accablé par la morne journée et la perspective d'un triste lendemain, je portai à mes lèvres une cuillerée du thé où j'avais laissé s'amollir un morceau de madeleine. Mais à l'instant même où la gorgée mêlée des miettes du gâteau toucha mon palais, je tressaillis, attentif à ce qui se passait d'extraordinaire en moi. Un plaisir délicieux m'avait envahi (...)"

"Et tout d'un coup, le souvenir m'est apparu. Ce goût, c'était celui du petit morceau de madeleine que le dimanche matin à Combray (...) ma tante Léonie m'offrait après l'avoir trempé dans son infusion de thé ou de tilleul." 

"Quand d'un passé ancien rien ne subsiste, après la mort des êtres, après la destruction des choses, seules, plus frêles mais plus vivaces, plus immatérielles, plus persistantes, plus fidèles, l'odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sous leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l'édifice immense du souvenir."

Marcel Proust in Combray in Du côté de chez Swann in A la recherche du temps perdu (1913) (source http://du-sacre-au-sucre.blogspot.com)