Category Archives: cake

Chocolate cake in a cup

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Filed under Baking, cake, chocolate, dessert, Dinner party pudding, easy puddings, Easy recipes, mug cake

mug cake 1

I love making mug cakes. I love how easy they are – no weighing, melting or creaming, just measuring and adding spoonfuls into a cup. Last night Mr Arabella Cooks and I fancied a quick dessert after our evening roast so I knocked one of these up. We stood with our noses pressed against the microwave door oohing and ahhhing at the magic of the rapidly rising pud and it’s gorgeously thick, intensely chocolatey smell. When they work these are as good as any fancy restaurant or dinner party fondant.  Overcook them however and they are disgusting – like rubbery cardboard. Every microwave oven (bizarrely) cooks differently, so you might have to make a couple before you discover the exact time it takes to achieve mug cake perfection in your own oven. My first attempt last night didn’t work.  The recipe I used called for far too long in the oven. The second one, though, after a few tweaks, was utterly gorgeous.

They don’t photograph terribly well. The feature picture here is essentially just a mug. Sorry about that. But cooked perfectly they taste divine. So get a dozen or so eggs in, find someone to sample the ones that don’t work (our two year old is very handy in that regard) and enjoy the research.

Serves two (or 1 greedy person)

Equipment:

  • A mug
  • Some measuring spoons (these are a really useful thing to have in your kitchen; dessert spoons all differ in size so to be really accurate you need these)

Ingredients:

  • 4 tablespoons of plain flour
  • 4 tablespoons of sugar
  • 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten
  • 3 tablespoons of milk
  • 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil or melted butter (I use oil)
  • 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla essence
  • a  handful of dark chocolate pieces (I used Dr. Oetker dark chocolate chunks; chop up a small bar of chocolate if you don’t have any chips or chunks to hand)
  • Optional – a teaspoonful of peanut butter

Method

  1. Put the dry ingredients into the mug and stir with a fork
  2. Add the milk, oil or butter and vanilla. Stir to combine
  3. Add the egg and stir until you have a smooth, glossy batter with no pockets of flour
  4. Stir in the chocolate pieces and if you’re going to use it put the teaspoon of peanut butter into the middle of the batter and scrape in the peanut butter using another teaspoon
  5. Put the mug into the microwave. In mine, which is 900W, it takes exactly 1 minutes and 30 seconds to achieve fondant nirvana.
  6. Let it cool slightly, then either eat it straight from the mug or run a palette knife around the edge and tip it out gently onto two plates. There should be a natural break in the middle where it’s still gooey, giving you two perfect melting middle chocolate fondant puddings. It’s delicious with ice cream, especially my raspberry ripple. Yum!

Gluten free mocha chocolate ice box cake

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Filed under cake, chocolate, dessert, Gluten free, mocha, pudding, Sweet things

cake 3

A friend of mine is poorly so I made her a cake. This is a spectacularly easy way of making an impressive and delicious gluten free dessert, but it can be gluten free or gluten containing in the blink of an eye. It just depends what kind of biscuits you use. It’s based on the principle of an Italian tiramisu – flavoured whipped cream layered with biscuits. You put it in the fridge overnight and it hardens the cream and softens the biscuits (into ‘sponge’) et voila: cake/pudding/breakfast/whatever. Top it with something delicious and yum to the max, frankly.

Ingredients:

  • 4 packets of Maryland double choc chip cookies (if you don’t need to go down the gluten free route) or 5 packets of gluten free double chocolate chip biscuits (Kent of Fraser or Doves are good) to make it gluten free.
  • 600ml double cream
  • 100g caster sugar
  • 50/60ml of cold espresso coffee
  • 1 teaspoon of good vanilla essence
  • 350g mascarpone
  • 2 tablespoons of cocoa or cacao powder
  • Optional extra if not making for children: (60 mls Kahlua)

Method:

  1. In a large bowl, whisk together the cream, mascarpone, sugar, cocoa/cacao, cold espresso and vanilla (and Kahlua if using), until it forms firm peaks.
  2. Take a high sided, loose bottom cake tin (you don’t need it to be springform) and put a layer of biscuits on the bottom. You’ll need to break some to make the jigsaw of biscuits fit with as few gaps as possible (it takes practice; by the last layer I was brilliant at it).
  3. Spread a thin layer of the cream mixture over the biscuits. Put another layer of biscuits on top (again assembling it like a jigsaw) followed by another layer of cream and so on until you have run out of biscuits and cream/come to the top of the tin. You should end up with around 5 layers, with the top layer being cream.
  4. Cover with clingfilm and refrigerate overnight (or all day if making in the morning to serve at night. It needs at least 6 hours).
  5. When ready, take it out of the fridge and run a small sharp knife around the outside of the cake and push the bottom up and out (I used Mr AC to help me with this). On the top I put some caramel and Belgian chocolate popcorn (for texture and flavour) and then shaved some Lindt Swiss Classic Double Milk chocolate bar (which is my current favourite cake decorating secret) with a vegetable peeler on top of that. I should mention though that the Lindt chocolate is not gluten free (my friend didn’t need a gf option) so if you can’t have gluten use something else to decorate).
  6. Serve cold, in wedges.
  7. Store it in the fridge and eat quickly as it won’t keep for very long (no matter though as you’ll want to eat it all immediately anyway because it’s Y U M!).

cake 4   cake 5