ramtops

Dear Reader, I have a confession to make. I had to throw out an orange. Oh, the shame. We’re not very good with fruit – we buy it, and then we don’t eat it, so this orange had languished in the bowl for quite a while, and had gone mouldy. It was accompanied by a companion orange which had not yet succumbed, and turned out to be really quite dry, still …  as we were out of cake, I did a quick Google, and adapted a recipe I found, thus:

2 tsp bicarbonate of soda dissolved in 180ml water
125g butter, softened (I used baking marg)
180g granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g plain flour
¼ tsp salt
1 orange
85g dark chocolate, chopped

(The recipe called for 200g chocolate, which would have been overpowering, I think).

Preheat the oven to 180°C / fan 160°C / gas mark 4.

Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the water and set to one side. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat well, then add flour and salt.

Roughly chop the whole orange into chunks by hand and then blitz in a food processor, skin and all. Add this to the cake batter along with the water and bicarbonate of soda, and stir.

Add the chocolate and stir through gentlye. Pour the mixture into your prepared tin (I used a 2lb loaf tin with a liner, and as always, blessed whoever made these available for sale, otherwise grease and flour) )and bake about an hour  until a skewer comes out clean when inserted. The recipe I adapted said 40-45 minutes, but that wasn’t nearly long enough, but check and check.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

We try not to use big supermarkets much. My usual haunt is Aldi, but if I must go elsewhere, we generally do Morrisons. And there are some “treaty” things we get in Morrisons, so when Pete cycled off there on Saturday with trailer in tow (after the car debacle), he was going to get some.

I’m diabetic, so I have to watch what I eat, but I love the Lindt plain chocolate with sea salt, and their Intense Coconut too. And Kallo plain chocolate ricecakes are very low cal/carb, considering. So imagine mine and Pete’s disappointment when none of these three items were to be found on the shelves in the Anlaby Road store. He asked where they were, and the assistant said she assumed they’d been dropped, and was apparently surprised, because the Lindt bars were a good seller. I do wish supermarkets wouldn’t do this – three less reasons to visit Morrisons now.

I was miffed at this, so when he got back, I walked down to the big Great Satan Tesco Extra in Hull. It’s only 2km away. I really do try not to use Tesco, although we had bought diesel there that morning (always happy to knock them for a 5p/gallon discount – and before you ask, we got the voucher from a friend!). I found the chocolate easily enough, although they only had a single, solitary bar of Lindt Intense Coconut, so I wonder if that’s going to be dropped by the manufacturer …

In wandering about, I found some blackberries. *Blackberries*! Three quid a punnet, if you please, which makes me weep; we used to get pounds off the brambles on the drive at our old house [sob].

In the end, I did a sort of experiment – made a basic upside down batter, laid the blackberries on the bottom of the cake tin, and poured the batter over it. It was absolutely lovely, although I should probably have made some sort of coulis or something. We just had it with cream

Blackberry cake

batter:
300g caster sugar
200g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
200g marg or butter
about 2 tbsp milk

some blackberries

22cm springform cake tin, greased and the bottom lined with parchment.  Although you could use any tin that size.

Preheat the oven to 180C Gas 4.

Line the bottom of the tin with the blackberries.

Now, you can do this like I do – I just put all the batter ingredients in the Magimix other than the milk and whizz it up. Or you cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs and flour and baking powder bit by bit, stir in the vanilla essence, then the milk. Up to you entirely.

The milk I leave to the end because you want a sort of dropping consistency, and it’s better to add it bit by bit.

Pour the mix over the blackberries, bake for 45 minutes-ish. The blackberries all rise through the cake. It’s lovely.

Leave it to cool for about half an hour, then turn onto a plate. It made eight quite generous portions, and I don’t know how well it would keep. So we sent half of it over to some friends that Pete was visiting last night, and they seemed to like it too!

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

For a few years, we have received a monthly box from the Hotel Chocolat Tasting Club. They are beautiful chocolates - rich and intense, and so not to be scoffed in a sitting, but rather savoured over several days.

But somehow we fell out of the habit of eating them, and had two unopened boxes sitting under the coffee table. This weekend I changed the order to deliver one box every 12 weeks, and last night we decided to open a box.

We had one large and two small chocs each, and I couldn't sleep for chocolate overload; this morning I feel as though I have a hangover, which is deeply unfair, as I have cut my alcohol intake by about 80% recently, and haven't had a drink since (I think) Monday evening, when I had one glass of wine.

And so we will have to ration ourselves to one an evening, which is quite difficult - because although the after effects are severe, the *consumption* is very enjoyable.