Stuff yer bake

I know it’s been a while since my last post but unfortunately I turned twenty five last week and I’ve been recovering from the depression ever since (no I’m not being over dramatic!!)

In a time honoured tradition every time it’s someone’s birthday at work we bring in something sweet (any old excuse for food, and it never lasts long). So I decided to make the above cake, a delicious chocolate and ginger cake. I kinda screwed up the pastry as I’d never made chocolate pastry, so it’s more difficult to see the consistency and I added a little too much liquid, but I think it turned out not too bad. My boyfriend was a little disappointed that I took it into work and he couldn’t eat it all.

The recipe (by Lulu Grimes, p28 of “30 irresistible cakes - baking for modern foodies”) goes as follows:

• white chocolate 200g
• liquid glucose 3tbsp
• dark chocolate 200g
• double cream 284ml
• crystallised ginger 4 lumps, finely chopped plus 2 tbsp of syrup

Pastry

• plain flour 150g
• cocoa powder 20g
• unsalted butter 75g chilled and cubed
• golden caster sugar 3tbsp
• egg yolks 3
• vanilla extract a few drops

Whizz flour, cocoa and butter to breadcrumb like mixture in a blender. Add sugar, whizz again, then add egg yolks and vanilla and process to make a paste. Shape pastry into a disk and chill.
Heat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade/fan 160/gas 4. Roll the pastry out and line a deep 20cm diameter tart tin. Bake blind for 15 mins or until the pastry is very dry, then cool. Melt half the white chocolate and paint over the base of the tart, then cool.

Melt the glucose and dark chocolate together in a saucepan over a low heat. Transfer to a bowl and cool slightly. Lightly whip the cream and fold into the chocolate, then fold in the ginger and syrup and spoon into the tart, then chill.

To decorate melt the rest of the white chocolate and using a piping bag swirl over the top of the tart. Devour

I went to London for my birthday for the day which was fun. We went to the Natural History Museum and then Harrods, where we ate in the food court. We basically had two sandwiches which, nice as they were, cost about £14 each, but then it was Harrods. We then went out to Browns in Coventry on Saturday night, so after all that revelry I’ve decided to get back on the wagon and have been eating celery since the start of the week (not really). I want CHOCOLATE!!!!!

Technorati Tags: chocolate, pastry, ginger, London, Harrods, Coventry, Browns

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 8:27 pm and is filed under Dining out, Cake, Triumphs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.