Chocolate Fudge Cake

or... does my bum look big in this?

This is another recipe I made for my boyfriends birthday. It came from his mother. She is getting back into baking as she is looking for a new job. She sent the recipe to me so I could making it and everyone here could try it out. And they did! The chocolate fudge cake was the first cake to be finished. Everyone went straight for it! Now is that a sign that Dutchies love chocolate or is it a sign that Dutchies are affraid to taste new unfamiliar cakes... You decide ;-)

Before I made this cake I had never made fudge before. I had eaten it but that was about it. The fudge recipe required a lot of powdered sugar. That was causing me some problems. As the Netherlands is not a baking country it can be really hard to find certain ingredients. Powdered sugar is one of them. Dutchies only use it for dusting cakes, poffertjes or oliebollen, but not for icing a cake or doing other things with it. Therefore you can buy powdered sugar, but not in big quantaties. As i didn't want to buy lots of small packages of powdered sugar, and spend lots of money in the process, I did some research and came up with a plan to make my own.

Making powdered sugar:
I did this in small quantities at a time as I wasn't sure if this was going to work. But it did work, so next time I can do more at a time.
To make powdered sugar you have to put some castor sugar in a blender and blend this for 1 minute. You need to make sure that all the sugar is really fine and powdery. To test this you can rub some between your fingers. If you still feel some crystals the sugar needs longer in the blender.

Now that you have the right amount of powdered sugar you can make the cake and the fudge.

Chocolate Fudge Cake
Ingredients:
3,5 tablespoons Cocoa
4 oz Butter or Margerine
8 fl. oz. of water
4 fl. oz of veg or sunflower oil (not olive oil)
12 oz. sugar
8oz Self-raising flour
2 Eggs
4 fl. oz. milk
0.5 tspn Baking Soda
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract (optional)

Method:
1. Preheat the oven at 180 C.
2. Line a 2lb loaf tin. (You can use a round tin if you like.)
3. Place cocoa, butter or margerine, oil and water in a pan, gently bring to just boiling. Stirring all the time so as not to burn the cocoa.
4. Remove from the heat and add the sugar and flour, stir gently in. Make sure all the flour is thourogly mixed
5. In a separate bowl beat the eggs and milk together then add the baking soda and vanilla, mix together quickly then add this to the pan mixture.
6. Quickly and gently mix together pour into the baking tin and bake at 180c for 1 ¼ to 1 ½ hours.

Fudge Icing:
Ingredients:
1,5 tablespoon Cocoapowder
4 oz Butter or Margerine
3 Fl. oz. Evaporated Milk (cream can be used instead)
1 lb Icing Sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

Method:
1. In a pan melt butter or margarine into the milk or cream,
2. Add the cocoa, icing sugar, and vanilla. Mix well. Do not get too hot as the sugar will burn, it should not boil.
3. Pour this topping over the top of the cake. Letting it cover all 4 sides and top of the cake*. It becomes easier to do when the fudge is slightly cooler.

Any unused topping can be kept in the fridge and if it is reheated in the microwave it can be poured over ice cream. Or pour it into a lined square pan and when set cut it into pieces. I loved eating it this way too.

*According to my boyfriend this is not how his mum put the icing on the cake. She left the cake in the form and poured the fudge over the cake like how you do normal icing. When I make this cake again I will make it that way and post another picture of the cake here.

Coffee and Walnut Cake

When I asked my boyfriend if he wanted me to make him a cake for his birthday, he said "Can you make me a coffee and walnut cake?" Now I love baking, and baking so that other people can enjoy it is even better. But I don't like walnuts... So making a coffee and walnut cake wasn't really my idea of a nice baking session. So I asked him if he really couldn't come up with something nice for both of us. But he seemed persistent.

Then I found out that our monthly potluck dinner with our neighbours was on the same day and we needed something to bring with us. What better then baking for even more people. So I decided that our addition to the potluck dinner would be the dessert, in the form of cake.

I made three different cakes in total and half of the cake went to work with my boyfriend to share with his colleagues. The other half was shared with my neighbours. When my boyfriend came back from work he said the cakes were an success. All of it got eaten in notime. And that evening when we had the potluck dinner our neighbours were also really enthousiastic. One of my neighbours even asked me to make her two cakes for her birthday the following day!
On thursday my parents were over for a coffee, they tried all three cakes and also loved them. With the coffee and walnut and chocolate fudge cake (will be in the next post) as their favorites.
The coffee and walnut cake kept on staring at me from the table, whispering me: "Im a pretty cake, you need to try me!" so in the end I had to try a piece. Eventhough I don't like walnuts this cake was actually really nice. So I will be eating this cake onwards now too. It doesnt have a very strong nut flavor.
The first recipe I will to share with you is the recipe of the Coffee and Walnut Cake. It is a recipe from my boyfriends mother, and not very hard to make.

Coffee and Walnut Cake

Ingredients:

For the cake:
225 gram (8 oz.) of butter
225 gram (8 oz.) of caster sugar
4 medium eggs
340 gram (12 oz.) of self-raising flour
55 gram (2 oz.) of walnuts
2 dessert spoons of instant coffee
1 dessert spoon of hot water
2 dessert spoons of cold milk
(For the coffee flavor you could also use 60 ml (2 fl oz.) of strong espresso coffee)

For the icing:
instant coffee powder
hot water
icing sugar

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 150C.

2. In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until very light and pale.

3. Add the eggs one at a time to the butter and sugar mixture, beating well to completely incorporate each egg before adding the next egg.

4. Mix the coffee with the hot water and milk, and add espresso to the mixture and stir well.

5. Sift the flour onto the mixture, add the walnuts and stir well to completely combine.

6. Spoon the cake mixture into a lined and greased 20cm/8in cake tin.

7. Bake for 45-60 minutes. Check at 40 the give away is the smell.

When you start to smell it give it 10 mins then take a sneaky look. The centre of the top of the cake should be firm to the touch when cooked. If you take it out too soon the cake will fall. Don't be fooled by the colour it will look brown before its ready because of the coffee.

8. When the cake is done, take it out of the oven and let it cool. Make the icing and pour on cake. Wait till the cake and frosting are fully cooled and enjoy!

First Post

Hi, my name is Anna and this is my first ever post on a blog. I have had the feeling of starting a blog for several times now, but never had the courage to actually start one. What can be interesting enough to keep people interested in whatever I post.

But one day after looking for a nice vegetarian dish I had to cook for a pot luck dinner, I came across my first foodblog. And after sniffing around on that blog, I found the links section and via that the big online community of food bloggers. Lots and lots of people that, like me, enjoy cooking and trying out new food.

Before that day I liked collecting recipe's out of (food) magazines, but never cooked them. Most of them are still on a pile waiting to be cooked. Most of the times I cooked either the traditional dinner: potatoes, veggies and meat or fixed me and my boyfriend a stir-fry. But since the day I found that food blog I have been more adventurous and trying out lots of new recipe's, herbs, spices and even techniques. This blog will tell you the story of my adventures in and around the kitchen.