Roulade, roulade, roulade, roulade rolls from your tong and plate. This recipe was inspired by one of my all-time hero’s, Sam Stern, being a teen himself, wrote a teen’s survival cookbook. This one I made for Helette, a small something to say happy 21st!
Makes one big cake for 10 people or 3 small ones
You need:
Sunflower oil or Cook ‘n Spray, for greasing.
250 grams dark chocolate
160ml castor sugar
5 eggs
4 ½ T espresso or strong coffee, freshly made
Icing sugar, for dusting
One carton (250ml) double cream or mascarpone
250g strawberries or other berries, as you wish
To make someone’s wish come true:
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Take a tin about 23 x 33 cm or 3 loaf tins and line with greaseproof paper, and grease it. Fold it so that it fits nicely; let the paper stick out around the sides. Separate your eggs with clean hands, no oil, the whites going into a small stainless steel bowl and the yolks in another. Whisk the whites until they form stiff peaks, about 3 minutes with an electric whisk. Add the castor sugar to the yolks and whisk them until it turns light in colour and resembles what would be eggy mousse. Break the chocolate finely into a heavy-bottomed, non-stick pan and add the espresso. Let this melt over a very low heat, take care not to burn at all, and keep whisking! This will only take you less than one minute. Add the melted chocolate to the yolks and fold in with a big metal spoon. Next fold in the egg whites with the spoon. The odd spot of white is does not matter. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 25 minutes for the big tin, if you insert a knife in the middle and it comes out clean then hey! It is ready! The loaf tins will take approx. 15 minutes. It may be cracked at the top, that is fine, and it will also sink after it cools down. Let it cool down for at least 15 minutes. Whisk the double cream so long, and add some orange zest if you like it. Smooth it over the roulade with a knife, not to thick, not to thin, just right. Lift the short end of the roulade and roll it away from you so that it looks like an odd Swiss roll. Peel off the baking parchment as you roll. Take it easy, it may crack and break but it is not the end of the world. Keep rolling until you come to the end of it, transfer to a plate, cut and toss a few strawberries around it and dust with icing sugar (use a sift). Happy eating!
This cake is the 1, 2, 3 of choclate cakes – soft and moist, but I’m missing the intense chocolatey taste here. I guess that is because of the use of cocoa, it still does not allude to that chocolate high. Nevertheless, it still gets the thumbs up-sign! When looking for the ideal but easy birthday cake, last-minute or 35 minute chocolate cake, or if you are new to this nirvana, go for this one! Mmmmm….
For the cake:
400ml cake flour
220ml castor sugar
1 t baking powder
1/2 t bicarbonate of soda
120ml best-quality cocoa you can find
175g unsalted butter, soft
2 large eggs
2 t vanilla extract
150ml sour cream
Take everything out of the fridge, just to let it come to room temperature. Put your oven on 180 degrees Celsius, and grease (with butter or marge or cooking spray) your cake pan – any one you like as long as it is big enough for the mixture. Line it with baking parchment at the bottem. (For a round cake tin, use a square piece, fold it in a triangle in half, then the triangle in half again, and once more. Put the tip in the middle of the pan, and measure it along the edge – the size of the pan. Tear/cut it with a round angle and open the paper, it should be more-or-less round and ready to fit!)
All you have to do is chuck all the ingredients in a food processor and mix! I find it to be a quite thick batter so watch it as it spins for about 30 seconds. You can also do it the other way – here goes – mix the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, raising agents except the cocao) and then cream in the butter by beating it with a whisk for a bit less than a minute. Whisk in the cocoa, sour cream, vanilla and eggs.
Put this in your cake pan, make shure your oven is hot enough and pop it in for 35 minutes, start checking at 25 though, especially if you are making two smaller layers (you can also swop them around half way into the cooking time if one is under the other one in the oven (to ensure even cooking). Test if the cake is ready by inserting a sharp knife in the middle of the cake – if it comes out clean, not wet with chocolate, it is ready! Take it out…
Leave it alone for 10 minutes, just so that it can cool down before you turn it out, otherwise it will break (tried and tested)! Then turn it out on a wire rack for further cooling (5 minutes). This feels like forever – but now you can ice the cake! Use a can of caramel, mixed around a bit to loosen it up and then spread over nice ‘n thick. Or you can make some
ganache (the chocolate icing of the kings which uses no icing sugar): equal quantities of dark chocolate and cream, in this case use 150g dark chocolate and 150ml cream. Put a deep pan on the heat with a some water in it. Now you need a bowl which does not touch the water, will fit the pan like a lid, so that no steam escapes. Place the chocolate (broken up into small pieces) and the cream in that bowl. Turn the heat down. When the chocolate has melted, about 3-5 minutes, take it off the heat and whisk furiously in the bowl, or you can transfer it not to spill this liquid black gold. It should be glossy and smooth. All you have to do is pour the ganache on the cake in the middle, use every bit of it and let it run over the sides. Transfer to a clean serving plate.
*This cake a made for dessert once, and served it with ice cream. That was cool, but my icing just did not work this time, I added to much cream. It happens!
