A Devilishly Good Devil's Food Cake

There is a definite end-of-term feeling in the air even though today like yesterday is surprisingly grey and overcast with a hint of rain. The seasons in Istanbul are very marked and holidays follow the school year: summer is now round the corner and the city will empty immediately schools finish in June. Turkish families will leave en masse for their seaside homes and expats will depart on annual home leave. Istanbul minus traffic then becomes the most wonderful summer city in which to be.



devil's food cake ready to serve



Last week a group of close friends met at my house for the last tea party of the season before such departures.  I especially wanted to hold it here before the imminent birth of Daughter No 2’s long-awaited baby! So I was looking for a special cake to offer my friends and found it in Nigella’s book Kitchen. It was the picture that drew me – I always go for recipes with pictures – and I thought it looked decadently delicious. Indeed it proved to be instant Death by Chocolate and was worth every calorie-filled mouthful!

with a few ripe strawberries alongside



Here is the very straightforward recipe for Nigella’s Devil’s Food Cake:

Ingredients

Serves 10-12

2 x 20cm sandwich tins

For the cake:

50g best-quality cocoa powder,sifted

100g dark muscovado sugar (I used light as that’s all I had)

250ml boiling water

125g soft unsalted butter, plus some for greasing

150g caster sugar (I used regular granulated sugar)

225g plain flour

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs, at room temperature

For the frosting:

125ml water

30g dark muscovado sugar

175g unsalted butter, cubed

300g best-quality dark chocolate, broken into small pieces

Method

·         Preheat oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Line the bottoms of both sandwich tins with baking parchment and butter the sides.

lined with baking parchment

weighing the cocoa

·         Put the cocoa and 100g dark muscovado sugar into a bowl with a bit of space to spare and pour in the boiling water . Whisk to mix and then set aside.

·         Cream the butter and caster sugar together, beating well until pale and fluffy.

·         In another bowl, stir the flour, baking powder and bicarb together and set aside.

·         Dribble the vanilla extract into the creamed butter and sugar – mixing all the while – then drop in 1 egg, quickly followed by a scoopful of flour mixture, then the second egg.

·         Keep mixing and incorporate the rest of the dried ingredients for the cake, then finally mix and fold in the cocoa mixture, scraping the bowl well with a spatula.

·         Divide this ‘fabulously chocolatey batter’ between the 2 prepared tins and put in the oven for about 30 mins or until a cake tester comes out clean. Take the tins out and leave them on a wire rack for 5-10 mins, before turning out to cool. Peel off the paper.

you can tell they are done because they are coming away from the sides of the tin

removing the paper

For the frosting:

2 bars nestles bitter + 1 bar lindt = 300g

1.       Put the water, 30g muscovado sugar and 175g butter in a pan over a low heat to melt.

2.       When this mixture begins to bubble, take the pan off the heat and add the chocolate pieces, swirling the pan so that all the chocolate is hit with heat, then leave for a minute to melt before whisking till smooth and glossy.

3.       Leave for about 1 hour, whisking now and then, by which time the cakes will be cooled and ready for frosting.*

filled but uniced

4.       Set one of the cooled cakes, top side down, on a cake stand or plate, and spread with about a third of the frosting, then top that with the second cake, regular way up, and spread the remaining frosting over the top and sides, swirling away with your spatula. This frosting ‘never quite dries to the touch but this is, in part, what makes the cake so darkly luscious. Goo here is good.’

Tips

*I actually had to wait 2 ½ hours before my chocolate frosting thickened and acquired a spreadable consistency. I’m not sure whether this was because of the chocolate or what but was quite worrying at the time! It looked fabulous, dark and glossy but refused to firm up. However, in the end it was perfect. Moral of the story: don’t panic, it'll all be fine.

The cake layers can be baked 1 day ahead and assembled before serving. This is what I did. Wrap each separately in cling film and leave on a plate or place in a tin. The iced cake will keep for 2-3 days in an airtight container in a cool place.

Uniced cakes can be frozen on day of baking, each wrapped in a double layer of clingfilm and a layer of foil, for up to 3 months. Defrost for 3-4 hrs on wire rack at room temperature.

Why don't you give this cake a try? I promise you'll love it!

Afiyet olsun!

Strawberry Cream Tart

 Last week we had friends round for dinner two nights in a row. To make life easier I decided to make tarts for dessert for both nights: the first one our favourite bakewell and the second a beautiful seasonal strawberry cream.



mounds of sweet-smelling strawberries

I had just received the latest copy of Cornucopia magazine, the exceptional publication for Turkey lovers, pricey but worth it, which had a beautiful section on strawberries: hence the inspiration. Some of the descriptions are so wonderfully evocative: İffet Evin wrote in Yaşadığım Boğazici/ The Bosphorus That I lived On, published in 1987 wrote ‘Oh, those Arnavutköy strawberries ...their scent used to waft to the other shore, as far as Vaniköy’.

‘She recalls as a child waking early in the morning to the scent of strawberries and the cry of strawberry sellers as they rowed across the Bosphorus to sell their fruit on the Asian side, where she lived.’

Can’t you just imagine it, see it, smell it?

These strawberries are still available, unremarkable in colour but unmistakable with their sweet fragrance  and sold by roadsides not from boats. A completely different species to their supermarket sisters of the bright red, perfectly-shaped variety which over the past few years have become available all year round. Being the purist that I am, I never buy those as honestly they are tasteless but wait for the local seasonal ones. They are red too because they are cultivated  and cross-bred to be ever-hardier but at least they taste!

The following recipe is for Strawberry Cream or Çilekli Krem, and can be used as a filling as I used it for a pre-cooked tart shell*.

strawberry cream tart

Ingredients for Çilekli Krem (pron: chi-lek-li krem)

A handful of ripe strawberries

3 egg yolks

7 tbsp sugar

3 tbsp plain flour

2 cups (50 cl) milk

Butter

Method

·         Rinse the strawberries and reserve a few of the best-looking ones for decoration. Hull the rest. Dry the fruit with a paper towel without bruising and set aside. If the strawberries are large, halve or quarter them.

·         In a deep pan whisk the egg yolks with the sugar. Add the sifted flour and mix. Pour the cold milk into the pan, whisking continuously to obtain a smooth texture.

·         Cook the mixture over a gentle heat, stirring until it begins to bubble and thicken. Simmer a little longer to allow the flour to cook completely.

·         Add the strawberries and a few knobs of butter to the hot cream, stir and leave to cool, covered, to allow the cream to absorb the intense flavour of the fruit.

·         Pour into the tart shell and smooth evenly. Decorate with the remaining stawberries. I added some toasted almonds as in the picture.

toasting a few flaked almonds in a pan

Tips

1.      Make your usual pastry or follow my earlier recipe, and use to line an 8in/20 cm tart dish . I am in love with my rectangular shape which I got from John Lewis last year. Easier to cut and serve from. Pastry keeps well in the fridge so long as it well covered. It also freezes brilliantly.

2.       It is important that the filling is cold when you pour it in otherwise the pastry will go soggy.

3.       This recipe by Berrin Torolsan in Cornucopia is just for a cream - the classic crème patissière  - which she suggests serving in an elegant bowl.  Be warned though, the amount here would only serve 2-4 max. However it is ideal for filling a tart.

BTW if you click on the pictures, they will enlarge!

Afiyet olsun!

removing pastry case from tin without it breaking!

Tea Time Baby Time

What do I know about baby showers? Nothing. Just a vague idea, really.

They are not an English thing.  But I wanted  to celebrate. Daughter No 2 is expecting a baby girl in about 5 weeks and excitement is mounting.

the piece de resistance!



baby badem şekeri/sugared almond

There were so many friends I wanted to invite but reason - and size of sitting room - prevailed and we were about 22: mostly her friends but also some of mine, those who had a close connection with her. So it was a mixed group, Turkish and English, young and old, family and friends.

I made squidgy lemon-ginger cake, this time with soft dried apricots which made it beautifully moist:

squidgy lemon-ginger cake

Joan’s chocolate chip cookies, always popular:

joan's chocolate chip cookies

A Bakewell Tart with a cutout teddy bear shape:

bakewell tart

And these cupcakes:

 This was a new recipe from BBC Good Food's website - Romantic rose cupcakes but decorated with sprinkles and strawberries. I normally love this website but this particular recipe wasn't very successful: way too much butter and that icing with white chocolate, icing sugar and yet more butter was sickly. But the finished cupcakes looked pretty and tasted all right. It's just that I won't be making them again. 

My daughter's mother-in-law is a fabulous traditional Turkish cook and among her many specialities are dolma and börek.She even makes her own yufka/filo pastry from scratch! She came bearing great tepsi or trays of both, the sight of which calmed my palpitations: now I knew we would have more than enough to eat!

Unfortunately there was no chance to photograph them which is a pity as just then, the guests started to arrive: so what with the doorbell ringing, telephones both home and mobile too with friends asking for last minute directions, parking spaces ... it was all pretty hectic and the moment for photography eluded me.

 Daughter No 1 employed her well-honed organizational skills and led us through various games on a baby theme starting with Guess the Girth of the Mom-to-be, followed by a light-hearted quiz based on the father-to-be's answers that she had elicited beforehand. And then a special Pass the Parcel where each layer of paper contained a challenge eg name 3 famous babies!

But the grand finale was the baby cake that I had ordered from a novelty cake-making bakery arkadaş pasta & çiçek (tel: 0216 449 4950) just round the corner from here in Fenerbahçe:

chocolate filled with cherries: it was perfect complete with edible bib, booties, and dummy!

Back in Business with Sticky Citrus Sponge Cake!

served with fresh strawberries and cream

 Is this too good to be true? Is this post actually going to materialize complete with photos? Here is the recipe that I have been trying to put up all week! You will love it and the family will love you for it.

What a cake this is! It can be a pudding too. If it was served warm, it would remind me of treacle stodge as we used to call it at school. Needless to say, it was our favourite pud. Make it now with the last of the season’s oranges: it makes a good-sized cake, moist, sticky on top, very flavoursome indeed and not at all stodgy.

Last week I enjoyed it not once but twice! The first time I made it for a ladies’ lunch and the second time my dear friend Leyla offered it as a dinner party dessert. We had both been seduced by the cover picture of the latest BBC Good Food magazine and quite separately decided to make it for our guests. Here it is:

Ingredients for  Sticky Citrus Sponge Cake

Cuts into 10

4 medium oranges*

6tbsp golden syrup, plus extra to serve, optional

200g/7oz butter, at room temperature plus extra for greasing

200g/7oz soft brown sugar

200g/7ozself-raising flour**

1 tsp baking powder

100g/4oz ground almonds

4 large eggs

Method

·         Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Finely grate the zest from 2 oranges into a large bowl. Cut the peel and pith from all the oranges with a serrated knife, and slice quite thickly.

·         Drizzle the golden syrup evenly over the base of a greased 23cm round cake tin. There is no need to line the tin and it shouldn’t have a loose bottom otherwise the syrup will bubble through. Arrange the best orange slices on top of the syrup and finely chop any that don’t fit.

·         Put all the remaining ingredients in the bowl with the zest and chopped orange. Beat with an electric hand mixer until smooth. Spoon on top of the oranges, spread lightly and make a deep hollow in the centre of the mix with the back of a spoon – this will ensure that the cake rises evenly.

·         Bake for 45-50 mins until firm when pressed. Allow to settle for 5 mins before turning out. Drizzle with golden syrup if you like (I didn’t) and serve with custard or ice cream. I served with strawberries and cream.

Tips

1.       *I used only 2 oranges here – they were obviously not using Turkish oranges in the original recipe!

2.       **I make my  own self-raising flour here by adding ½ tsp BP to 2oz/50g plain flour and sifting together. Works perfectly!

3.       I have the greatest joy in announcing that Golden Syrup so beloved by us Brits is actually available at certain supermarkets here in Istanbul. A bit pricey perhaps as I saw on my recent trip to London that it costs £1 there which seems given away in comparison. But at least we can get it.

4.       And finally re ground almonds which I have mentioned before as being hard to find at least on a consistent basis, a friend has just told me that they are available at Metro. The only trouble is the amount as it comes in industrial quantities. But that is not an insurmountable obstacle ...

and here it is: sticky citrus sponge cake

 Afiyet olsun!

Ottolenghi-inspired: Carrot and Walnut Cake

carrot and walnut cake in all its glory

Mmmmm. Need I say more?

Who knows Ottolenghi? Last May when we stayed in Islington was the first time I came across this cafe, deli, patisserie and bakery known by this distinctive name. And there are cookbooks too! This one is called simply ‘Ottolenghi The Cookbook’. It contains recipes for exactly the kind of food I like: familiar ingredients but used in new and exciting ways. I can’t wait to buy it for myself as my dear physio who lent me this will want it back any day now!

After this post, I  promise to go back to my pulses and knobbly veggies.

But this is one of the other two cakes I made for my Book Club meeting last week and judging by the reactions, I think it’s probably an excellent recipe to share. 

These cakes that I bake, by the way, are not Turkish in the slightest but they go down well with both Turkish and foreign friends alike. Cakes per se are not a traditional part of the cuisine here: if you want something sweet – and for sure there is no shortage of items in this category – you would normally buy baklava, helva or any of the many Middle Eastern syrupy sugary desserts like the exotically-named Lady’s Navel or Nightingale’s Nest from speciality bakeries or patisseries. There are yet other shops that specialise in milk-based puddings and the selection is an eye-opener.

It took me a long time to get used to the idea of carrot cake. At first it seemed very ‘American’ to me and the thought of carrot in something sweet did not remotely appeal. But time moves on and it has now long been absorbed into my baking psyche and repertoire.

This cake is ‘light and fluffy’ as opposed to ‘dense and fruity’. I think it’s quite perfect.

Ingredients

160g plain flour

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon/tarçin

¼ tsp ground cloves/karanfil

1 large egg

1 egg yolk

200g sunflower oil

270g caster sugar (in Turkey just use the regular toz şeker)

50g walnuts/ceviz, chopped

50g desiccated coconut/hindistan cevizi

135g carrot, roughly grated

2 egg whites

Pinch of salt

Icing

175g cream cheese at room temperature

70g unsalted butter

35g icing sugar/pudra şekeri

25g honey/bal

30g walnuts/ceviz, chopped and lightly toasted

Method

·         Preheat oven to 170C/Gas Mark 3. Grease a 20cm springform cake tin and line the base and sides with baking parchment.

·         Sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarb of soda and spices. Lightly whisk the whole egg with the egg yolk.

·         Put the sunflower oil and caster sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for about a minute on medium speed. On a low speed, slowly add the beaten egg. Mix in the walnuts, coconut and carrot and then the sifted dry ingredients. Don’t over mix.

·         Transfer the mixture to a large bowl. Wash and dry the mixer bowl, making sure it is totally clean, then put the egg whites and salt in it and whisk on a high speed until firm peaks form.

 

like this

Gently fold the egg whites into the carrot mixture in 3 additions, being careful not to over mix. Streaks of white in the mixture are okay.

·         Pour the cake mixture into the prepared tin and bake for approximately 1 hour; it could take longer. A skewer inserted in the centre should come out dry. If the cake starts getting dark before the centre is cooked through, cover it with foil. Let the cake cool completely and then remove from the tin.

·         To make the icing, beat the cream cheese in a mixer till light and smooth. Remove from the mixer. Beat the butter, icing sugar and honey in the mixer until light and airy. Fold together the cheese and butter mixes. Spread waves of icing on top of the cake and sprinkle with the nuts.

good view of that nutty topping



I think my only complaint is that a lot of washing up of bowls is involved! But that’s minor when you think of the end result.

Afiyet olsun!

Chocolate Banana Muffins

chocolate banana muffins for tea

If you’re looking for something nice to make this weekend or if you just feel like making a little extra something for tea for the family on Sunday, I think these are a good bet: easy ingredients, easy instructions and yummy result.

Cupcakes by any other name, these two flavours are wonderful together: the one complements the other in one delightfully moist muffin.

Arriving back from my lovely weekend in Selçuk on Sunday evening, I rushed into the kitchen to take these and the two cakes I had made on Thursday out of the freezer.  All of them including these little beauties freeze beautifully.  Our monthly book club meeting  was the very next day here at my place so it was all systems go.

These muffins are actually a Nigella recipe. Now, I can’t say I am a great fan of hers normally – I find it hard to believe that she is really doing all that cooking -  but I was given her lovely book ‘Kitchen’ for Christmas and finally had the opportunity to look through it. The recipes are not difficult at all: it’s the photos that make it. And on p139 a very appetizing picture of these muffins caught my eye. Instead of regular muffin  cases, they were each in a swirl of shiny brown paper that made them look sophisticated and most delicious:  she calls them ‘tulip-skirted party frocks’ which is a wonderful description. Well, I didn’t have these, just my lovely muffin cases that I bought in LA last summer – BTW you can buy them at IKEA but the shape is different: seems Swedish cupcakes are tall and narrow: very fetching but then you have to buy the matching muffin tin .... I’ll probably end up doing that. But anyway, here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

Makes 12

3 very ripe or overripe bananas

125ml vegetable oil

2 eggs

100g soft light brown sugar

225g plain flour

3 x 15ml tbsp best-quality cocoa powder, sifted

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method

·         Preheat oven to 200C/gas mark 6 and line a muffin tin with papers.

·         Mash the bananas by hand or with a freestanding mixer and then add the oil followed by the eggs and sugar.

·         Mix the flour, cocoa powder and bicarb together and add this mixture, beating gently, to the banana mixture, then spoon it into the prepared papers.

adding, mixing, beating

·         Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes, by which time the muffins should be dark, rounded and  ‘peeking proudly’ out of their cases. Allow to cool slightly in their tin before removing to a wire rack.

Tips

1.       Make the muffins up to one day ahead. Will keep for 2-3 days in an airtight container in a cool place.

2.       Can be frozen in an airtight container for up to 2 months.

3.       I think this is a really easy recipe and I  truly wasn’t expecting such wonderful muffins as these!

Our book this month was ‘Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand’ by Helen Simonson. Overall we gave it a grade of 3.5 out of 5. Personally, I gave it a 2 so you can tell it wasn’t my favourite read.

a bouquet of oya

I can't resist showing you these fantastic oya which I used instead of flowers in the middle of the table. Oya refers to the lace that village women make with a very very fine hook/tığ and use to edge headscarfs, like the one I am wearing in my profile picture at the top. I bought these last weekend  from a market in  the Selçuk area. They're amazing, aren't they?